Bonhoeffer on Darwinism

As I just finished writing two posts that are somewhat critical of Darwin, I thought it would be appropriate to get all my “picking on him” out of the way at once.  This is from a book by Bonhoeffer that I am reading (other quotes and details on it here.)  And of course, feel free to check out the rest of this blog series and the introduction of reading Darwin’s Origin of Species.

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Man shall proceed from God as his ultimate, his new work, and as the image of God in his creation… This has nothing to do with Darwinism: quite independently of this man remains the new, free, undetermined work of God… In our concern with the origin and nature of man, it is hopeless to attempt to make a gigantic leap back into the world of the lost beginning.  It is hopeless to want to know for ourselves what man was originally…

This chapter is Bonhoeffer’s mediation on Genesis 1:26, about God making man in his image.

I believe that Creation Theology comprises much more than the argument of Six-Day-Creation v. Darwinian Evolution.  How God created, how long it took– this is just a small part of something much bigger.  Creation Theology is bigger than that discussion just as the world we live in, and our current concerns, don’t revolve around this debate.  Creation Theology should set the table for a discussion about all facets of the world and God and life and history.  Evolution is like the butter tray.  Sure, it’s important and I wouldn’t deny its presence– but it ain’t the bread, and if the bread is good I could just eat my roll plain.

I don’t need to have a strong opinion on evolution or Creationism in order to make sense of the world.  Creation Theology tells me that just as God created light in Genesis 1, he shines the light of the gospel in our hearts.  I am much more concerned with that light!  That’s what it’s about!  That’s the entree!

And I think Bonhoeffer agrees.  He’s not rejecting Darwinism– he says that the theological significance of God creating man has nothing to do with it.  He’s not interested in relatively trivial historical facts.  That God created man in his image has huge implications on the rest of life.

Darwin rejects traditional Creationism view

Before reading, you may want to read my introduction which includes why I’m reading The Origin of Species, my scientific beliefs about evolution, and my theological beliefs about creation.  Also, click the category listed below the post for related post

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On the view that each species has been independently created, I can see no explanation of this great fact in the classifcation of all organic beings; but, to the best of my judgment, it is explained through inheritance and the complex action of natural selection… as we have seen illustrated in the diagram.

This quote comes from the summary to the Natural Selection chapter and right after the last quote from my last post on the diagram mention.

The literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is the backbone of “the view” he leaves unnamed– at least, of the Judeo-Christian view– there may be other historical Creation myths from other faiths/cultures.  Here’s how Genesis describes the individual creation of plants and animals.

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. ¹² The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds… the third day.

²⁰ And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” ²¹ So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind…the fifth day.

²⁴ And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. ²⁵ God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.

The assumption with a literal reading is that each animal was made individually– without reading any biographical info on Darwin, I will assume that he was aware of Genesis 1 and infer that his statement refers to the prevalent Creationist worldview and seeks to refute it.

As I said in the introduction, I don’t adhere to the literal Creationist view so his assertion doesn’t bother me.  But I also don’t adhere to the opposite extreme in which he believes, that natural selection is completely the answer.  There seems to be no room for middle ground in his opinion, and many today on both sides have an all-or-nothing view as well.

At this point, I feel some intellectual annoyance with Darwin.  First, his discussion of natural selection highlights man’s ignorance (see this post).  Yet he’s confident in asserting a theory that he has only “proved” in small sub-sections, grounded in the very limitations of time, scope, and perspective that he includes when talking about how natural selection is more powerful than man’s selection!  Second, unless I’m missing something, he is glossing over a lot of detail that I would think would be expected– at least, I’m expecting it if I’m supposed to consider his theory!

My annoyance has almost turned into antipathy though, with the last sentence of the summary.  This is probably what happens when you spend way too much time psycho-analyzing what a scientist wrote 150 years ago, but I think he’s being a smart-ass about all of it!

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the sruface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.

I am sure he was not trying to use the Tree of Life as an analogy to reproach Christians– but it felt that way.  And his faux eloquence struck me as satirical poetry.

Anyway, I’m moving on to Chapter 5- Laws of Variation- where I will begin afresh with an open mind.  According to my Kindle, I’m only 26% of the way through the book!  After taking a week or two off, I will attempt to read the next 24% or so by the end of April.

Darwin’s Tree of Life Diagram

Before reading, you may want to read my introduction which includes why I’m reading The Origin of Species, my scientific beliefs about evolution, and my theological beliefs about creation.  Also, click the category listed below the post for related posts.

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The accompanying diagram will aid us in understanding this rather perplexing subject.  Let A to L represent the species of a genus large in its own country; these species are supposed to resemble each other in unequal degrees, as is so generally the case in nature… The little fan of diverging dotted lines of unequal lengths proceeding from (A) may represent its varying offspring [Chris’ note: those going from bottom to top of the diagram]… When a dotted line reaches one of the horizontal lines, and is there marked by a small numbered letter, a sufficient amount of variation is supposed to have been accumulated to have formed a fairly well-marked variety.

OK.  This post is going to be all technical, not philosophical, because one of my primary intellectual reasons for reading the book was addressed by Darwin in this section and diagram.  This diagram shows how 11 unique species, over time, would evolve into 15 species (all different from the first 11).  Darwin believed extinction was an inevitable byproduct of natural selection.

In my introduction, I said that one of my intellectual obstacles with macro-evolution is how life evolved not within a genus into different species but within kingdoms and even the development from one-celled organisms to more complex creatures.  This chart and Darwin’s writing sort of helped answer that question.  The visual was helpful for grasping inter-genus evolution… but I already said that I could buy that– now I could explain it better.

Darwin says that scale is the key.  Let each horizontal line equal 1000 generations and at each line perhaps you have new varieties of a species, or even new species. After 14,000 generations “species are multiplied and genera are formed.”

Darwin also believes that the most distinct varieties survive.  Thus, it is not a coincidence that he chose the species that were at the extreme ends of the diagram to have the most evolved descendants.  If the extremes are selected and then their extremes selected and etc… that would speed up evolution and help explain incomprehensible changes.  These new species at the end of 14,000 generations differ much more from one another than the original 11, therefore meriting classification as more than one genus.

In this chapter, Darwin does not yet make the jump to large-scale evolution apologetics which I am expecting.  If this is it, I will be disappointed– I understand that he believes it’s the same idea, just taken to scale– but it’s so hard to believe!  I mean, seriously– it takes a lot of imagination.  Not in the sense that evolution is “made up”, but it is so beyond the human mind.  It would take faith for me at this point, something I’m not willing to give to this theory.

Yet in the summary following the chapter, Darwin sort of makes the jump– but with little explanation.  From a literary perspective, I was really surprised– had I missed something in his argument? From the summary:

It is a truly wonderful fact… that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group.

Wwww-wh-what?  He is very confident.  I expected a lot of sincere appeal and intellectual argumentation to precede this assertion in the book.  After all, wouldn’t most people at that time have rejected his findings?  Didn’t he expect intellectual attack?  I’ll have to assume that more explanation follows.