monkey trials and gorilla sermons response

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Viswahindu Rao

Earth 194DL

February 11th

, 2016

On the Origin of Evolutionary Thought: By Means of Science

More often than not, human beings tend to have an aversion to ideas that make

them feel insecure about their destinies, or lack thereof . With the phenomenon of

consciousness comes the eternal struggle to find one’s place in the universe, and naturally

it is one of the most difficult concepts to confront. Throughout most of human history,

religion has been an asylum for minds aching to find this kind of comfort in the cosmos,

and schools of thought that try to provide explanations of our origins have to fight to have

their voices heard. A general trend throughout the centuries is the sphere of influence of

religion shrinking to make room for scientific enlightenment; as we gather more and

more information about the workings of the universe, we have less of a need to explain

things away with simple answers, such as “God made it happen.” In his book Monkey

Trials & Gorilla Sermons, Peter J. Bowler shows this exact pattern of societal response to

ideas that take humans off of a divine pedestal, specifically evolution by natural

selection, and brings to light the extent to which humans will go to preserve their fragile

egos.

The biblical account of human origins as put forth by the Book of Genesis is a

pretty rigid explanation for how we came to be: God created Adam in his image, then

formed Eve, and expelled both of them from the Garden of Eden for disobeying his


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instructions to not eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Their offspring, and their

offspring’s’ offspring, then went on to populate the world, and we are all descended from

that original line. This story of Creation gives humans the sole position out of all other

life forms to have been formed in God’s image, and therefore grants us a special place in

his eyes. One can immediately learn from this story that humans like to think of

themselves to be of a higher order than other organisms. As we explore the history of the

theory of evolution in more detail, we will see that this attitude carries on to this day, and

it is one of the main arguments that is used to justify the rejection of evidence that shows

us otherwise.

Darwin’s On the Origins of Species: By Means of Natural Selection is one of the

great milestones of science, and it incited a firestorm of criticism unlike any other major

scientific revolution. The reason for the polarizing response is that it was the one of the

biggest infringements of science on the intellectual property long held by the church.

Before Charles Darwin came along, one could not easily propose a plausible explanation

of the origin of man that wasn’t the one put forth by the Bible. While studying the

adaptations of different species of finches on the Galapagos islands, Darwin realized that

the traditional Creationist viewpoint would imply that “God had performed a separate

miracle for every finch and mockingbird species on each of these insignificant islands”,

and that “this position reduced the creation hypothesis to absurdity” (87). It seems

apparent that the biblical creation story does not stand too resolute in the face of the

overwhelming diversity of life, and Darwin realized this even without the extensive

knowledge on the subject that we have today. His book brought up legitimate questions


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about the validity of the biblical account, and sparked some serious debate about whether

his scientific findings were reconcilable with Genesis. When analyzing the arguments put

forth by early opponents of evolution by natural selection, we see that one of their points

of contention was the implied relation between humans and apes. Apes, such as gorillas

and chimpanzees, were seen as dirty and brutish creatures from primitive and uncivilized

regions of the world, and the suggestion that they are our closest animal kin was

considered ridiculous. The reaction to this idea is one of the more obvious examples of

fragile human egos getting wounded, and efforts to suppress notions like these showed

how desperately people wanted to believe that God created them separately from other

animals. In the famous Huxley vs. Wilberforce debate at Oxford, legend states that the

religious Wilberforce asked Huxley if he was descended from an ape on his grandfather’s

side or his grandmother’s side. This point was made as an effort to ridicule this notion of

common descent, and it really underlines the efforts made by creationists to preserve their

status as higher life forms. As early as the 1870s, Darwinism was accepted by most

scientists and even most religious thinkers. However, some schools of thought, such as

the Lamarckian theory, were starting to gain some ground as alternatives to strict

Darwinian evolution.

One major source of disagreement was the role of natural selection in the

evolutionary process. The very nature of natural selection is a random and unforgiving

one; it is based on the selfish and individualistic struggle for survival, and it allows entire

populations to go extinct. How could a benevolent and compassionate creator allow so

much suffering and needless death to happen in the world in such a seemingly mindless


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manner? By implying that humans are merely by products of billions of years of

evolution, proponents of evolution via natural selection were apparently advocating for

humans to be viewed as nothing more than apes that could build cities. The idea of small

and random variations that eventually diffuse through a population was clearly the

opposite of that of a divine creator who had a plan for every human ever born. It was not

only creationists who were opposed to natural selection, but also evolutionary scientists

who did not want to believe in the random nature of natural selection. Lamarckian

scientists believed in the gradual evolution of species, but through an alternate process

called the inheritance of acquired characteristics. These scientists believed that this

process was driven by a universal moral purpose: progression towards higher forms of

life. This took place before the development of genetics as a legitimate scientific field, so

they thought animals could inherit learned characteristics from their parents (such as

giraffes passing down the trait of long necks to their offspring by stretching their necks a

little bit further to reach high branches). Lamarckism allowed for evolution to occur, but

it allowed organisms to “control not only their own destinies, but also the future

evolution of their species” (138). It is evident that the Lamarckian movement stemmed

from peoples’ desire to have some sort of order and meaning to their lives, as opposed to

more unpleasant notion that we are here due to the extreme luck of our ancestors and the

misfortune of billions of other animals in the past. It is a completely natural and sane

reaction to be immediately turned off from the idea of natural selection, especially if one

is already predisposed to the idea of a “meaning to life”. Reducing one’s own existence

to something as selfish, random, and unforgiving as natural selection is almost


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counterintuitive to the idea of placing value in all living things, and it can be a depressing

thing for a lot of people. For most Lamarckians, it was the inherent “lack of purpose”

behind natural selection that turned them away, not the science behind it. It was hard for

them to accept that evolution was driven by struggle, rather than some more positive

force. They wanted to believe that early giraffes “effectively marked out the whole future

of their species” by reaching their necks out to grab leaves, instead of the natural

selection viewpoint that the giraffes that couldn’t reach the higher leaves died out

because they could not compete for resources. This desire to find a purpose behind the

evolution of species stemmed from their desire to find a purpose to their own lives,

because they could not accept that we are just another ordinary species of animals,

instead of a part of some upper echelon of evolved organisms. In the case of

Lamarckism, it wasn’t solely religious people who were trying to discredit natural

selection, but the concept of humans having a special place in the world originates from

religious teachings.

While adherents to Lamarckism were not saying humans were created 6,000 years

ago like the biblical literalists, their hopes for a positive and meaningful evolutionary

driving force had roots in the creationists’ beliefs of some sort of purpose built into the

fabric of the universe. It wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that major advances in genetics

and statistical analysis of populations began to show the scientific community that natural

selection, and not some cosmic moral force, was in reality the main explanation for the

diversity of life. The modern evolutionary synthesis combines findings from a wide range

of fields, such as evolutionary biology, paleontology, genetics, developmental biology,


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etc, to formulate a rigid theory of evolution. Once scientists were able to find and analyze

this kind of data that was previously unavailable, it became apparent that, in the words of

legendary evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, “nothing in biology makes

sense except in the light of evolution.” Modern evolutionary theory can be used to

explain almost the entire spectrum of biological ideas and trends, from the microscopic

scale of genes to the studies of vast populations. After decades of extensive research,

debates, and publications, the scientific community came to accept the ideas of an

English naturalist with uncanny intuition, despite the protests of numerous wishful

thinkers.

The theory of evolution by natural selection has had a very rocky past, as it was

assailed from all directions for being to impersonal and harsh in its implied worldview.

The majority of arguments that it faces come from people’s desires to preserve their place

in some sort of plan for the cosmos, and in the process, save their egos from crashing

down to a more grounded worldview. We can see this even in religious movements

today, such as young earth creationism, which outright reject all scientific evidence that

point towards an impartial and sometimes “unfair” universe. This very natural reaction to

devalue uncomfortable ideas is what has held humanity back from reaching its full

potential for progress for centuries, and will continue to persist if we do not accept that

we are, in fact, not special and merely byproducts of indifferent natural processes .

monkey trials and gorilla sermons response

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