Living With Darwin by Philip Kitcher

"From the perspective of almost the entire community of natural scientists world-wide, continued resistance to Darwin is absurd." So says Philip Kitcher in his new book, Living With Darwin. This will surprise no one familiar with the state of biology today, yet the politics of evolution are not so simple. No doubt many will disbelieve that the scientific community is as united as Kitcher says it is. After all, what does he know? Here, however, Kitcher stands on firm ground with the support of strong credentials: Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, and his area of expertise is in the history and philosophy of science. This book is not his first on the debate over evolution, though it assumes no familiarity with his previous work.

Intelligent design is the new challenger to what is now called the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which is Darwinian evolution by natural selection combined with Mendelian genetics. Living With Darwin clarifies and adjudicates the debate between these two camps. Kitcher strongly supports Darwin over intelligent design, and if this is all there was to his book, it would be yet another--if unusually lucid and succinct--exegesis in an already crowded field. But this is not all there is to Kitcher's book.

More seriously, however, books like these are open to the charge of preaching to the choir: The kind of person who will read this book is not the kind of person who needs to read it. Perhaps. But Kitcher avoids these pitfalls as much as possible. Anyone who can read can read Living With Darwin; and few will be turned off by his argument style, which is careful and compassionate, sharply contrasting with people like Richard Dawkins, who Kitcher admits sound harsh and insensitive to thoughtful religious believers.

Against some of his peers, Kitcher argues that intelligent design is science, but it is dead science. On his riveting tour through the history of the debate, Kitcher shows that intelligent design is science in the same way that alchemy is science: Scientists at one time believed in its truth, but those scientists have been shown to be wrong. Accordingly, its only place in schools is in history of science and philosophy classes. But Kitcher adds another indictment: He argues that intelligent design cannot accommodate the kind of claims its adherents would like it to. The people who sell intelligent design, therefore, are rather like intellectual con artists. They know that people want a theory that can support supernatural religious claims, usually belief in the Bible; but they also know that intelligent design cannot offer such support. Their willingness to sell it to these people constitutes an intellectual fraud. Kitcher emphasizes the mendacity of these people, who know that if the public understood the theory, they would realize that it offers no more respite for embattled religious convictions than does belief in Darwinian evolution.

The first four chapters, which total 116 short pages, are a powerful defense of Darwinism against its rivals. But the heart of the book--where it makes its greatest contribution--is the final chapter, which runs to 50 pages. This is where Kitcher deals with the psychological motivations for intelligent design and the future of faith. His observations are unusually insightful but, at the same time, as charitable as possible to religious believers.

Surprisingly, Kitcher agrees with religious opponents to Darwin; evolution is dangerous to faith, or at least to a certain kind of faith. It is dangerous to what he calls "providentialist" faith. This is the religious faith, held by most people, which asserts the existence of a God who intervenes in the world. Evolution chips away at some of the last remaining reasons to believe in this God; and since beliefs require evidence to sustain them, this means that religious belief is in danger. In the story of his own intellectual journey, Kitcher tells us that these considerations motivated him to become an atheist. Though he does not believe that Darwinism necessitates atheism, it does make it more attractive; and it makes almost all forms of religion untenable. The only exception is non-providentialist religion, which eschews supernaturalism altogether. This, however, is not the kind of religion religious people want. They want something or someone to breathe meaning into their lives.

So: religion, for Kitcher, is a crutch, and he supports this with an impressive display of knowledge of the history of Christianity and the Bible. The Enlightenment has steadily eroded reasons to believe in God. Religion remains not because there is good evidence to support it, but largely because it gives life meaning. He quotes William James:

For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature's portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.

Intelligent design is the last desperate stride of skaters attempting to outrun the cracks in the ice behind them.

But doesn't this completely destroy my claim that Kitcher's book is compassionate, readable by anyone? Surely this amounts to smug superiority, right? Well, Kitcher admits that all of us, atheists included, are stuck on the ice. We all need comfort. Religion provides meaning where other areas of inquiry have failed, including recent philosophy, "which has found little time for larger questions about the meaning and value of human lives." Kitcher again quotes James approvingly:

"The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one." Yet if philosophers since James have treated the questions of how "world-formulas" bear on human lives with distaste or disdain, writers and artists have been less fastidious, exploring the possibilities for meaningful life in a world beyond supernaturalism. One way to do philosophy as James conceived it would be to explain and elaborate on literary and artistic insights.

Philosophy isn't the only player that needs to change: Kitcher argues that we also need to address the "harsh competitiveness of American life...the vapidity of much secular culture, and above all, the absence of real community." Religion fulfills these roles, and these are its great virtues.

Living With Darwin is as good a book on the subject as anyone could have asked for. It is as sensitive as possible, without being dishonest. It is as lucid and succinct as possible, without being unscholarly or unrigorous. And, as a third way between providentialist religion and Dawkins-style atheism, it is most welcome. I'll close with a quote from the final paragraph of the book:

There is truth in Marx's dictum that religion, more precisely supernaturalist and providentialist religion, is the opium of the people., but the consumption should be seen as medical rather than recreational. The most ardent apostles of science and reason recommend immediate withdrawal of the drug--but they do not acknowledge the pain that would be left unpalliated, pain too intense for their stark atheism to be a viable solution. Genuine medicine is needed, and the proper treatment consists of showing how lives can matter.