Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• God: Add a description of this character.
• Charles Darwin
• Creationists
• Theistic Evolutionists
• Deistic Evolutionists
• Atheistic Evolutionists
• Evolutionary Psychologists
• Blank-Slate Darwinians
• Social Darwinists
• Human Supremacists
• E. O. Wilson
• David Hume
• Danial Dennett
• Richard Dawkins
• William Paley
• Alfred Wallace
• Bertrand Russell
• William Hamilton
• Paul Tillich
• Richard Swinburne
• Michael Ruse
• Francis Galton
• Theodosius Dobzhansky
• Peter Singer
• Stephen Jay Gould
• John Hick

Quotes edit see section history

• “Why would the omnipotent creator of the entire universe be so deeply attached to a bipedal, tropical ape? Why would He take on the bodily form of one of these peculiar tailless primates? Why would such a magnificent being be so obsessively, nit-pickingly preoccupied with trivial matters such as the dress code and sexual behaviour of one mammalian species, especially its female members?”

• “The idea that the Biblical stories are symbolic is charitable to the point of absurdity. What would we think of a university professor who, happening upon unambiguous errors in a favourite student’s work, concluded that the student was speaking symbolically and awarded top marks?”

• “Some claim that life, the universe, and mind are miraculous. My conclusion is that these things are really, really amazing, but that they’re not miraculous (unless by miraculous, you just mean ‘really, really amazing’).”

• “Viewed from an evolutionary perspective, mind is not the cause of the order in nature; mind is an example of the order in nature - something to be explained rather than the explanation for everything else.”

• “Bertrand Russell once pointed out that ‘People are more unwilling to give up the word “God” than to give up the idea for which the word has hitherto stood’. Evolutionary theory may not persuade everyone to give up the word. However, to the extent that it encourages people to alter its meaning beyond recognition, it could be argued that God has nonetheless been a casualty of Darwin’s theory.”

• “A Ku Klux Klan member would be mortified to learn that he was actually a Black man. Many people’s reaction to learning that they are actually animals, or actually apes, is the same.”

• “To a hypothetical alien with a vastly superior intellect to our own, human minds would be classed as intermediate forms between the mindless and the fully minded.”

• “It seems that the evolutionist must conclude, along with the writer Vladimir Nabokov, that ‘our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness’. Brains that think otherwise – brains that deny they are brains and believe instead that they are eternal souls - are brains that hold false beliefs about themselves.”

• “When you contemplate the universe, part of the universe becomes conscious of itself.”

• “Around 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang, and almost four billion years since life first evolved, something strange began to happen: Tiny parts of the universe became conscious, and came to know something about themselves and the universe of which they are a part... Eventually, some of these tiny parts of the universe - the parts we call ‘scientists’ and ‘scientifically-informed laypeople’ - came to understand the Big Bang and the evolutionary process through which they had come to exist. After an eternity of unconsciousness, the universe now had some glimmering awareness that it existed and some understanding of where it had come from.”

• “It may be the fate of the universe to spend an eternity in darkness, save one brief flash of self-awareness in the middle of nowhere.”

• “Certainly, the human-animal distinction is still workable; after all, we rarely make errors in assigning entities to one category or the other. But after Darwin, the distinction suddenly seems arbitrary – as arbitrary as the equally workable distinction between, say, turtles and non-turtles.”

• “It is not clear that people have fully taken on board the idea that humans are animals. If they had, then perhaps academic disciplines such as sociology and anthropology would be viewed as specialist branches of zoology; medical doctors would be viewed as a subtype of veterinarians (one that specializes in tending to the health needs of just one species); human rights would be viewed as a subset of animal rights; and the socialization of children would be viewed as one example of the training or domestication of animals (making parents and teachers a subtype of animal trainers).”

• “Some people worry that to say we are nothing but matter is to deny that we think or feel. It’s not. The strange fact is that, when suitably arranged, matter thinks and feels.”

• “One could even argue that our creative endeavours and achievements and small acts of kindness are all the more impressive against the backdrop of a purposeless universe.”

• “People often assume that anyone who studies evolution thinks that everything should be about the survival of the fittest. However, this makes no more sense than assuming that anyone who studies glaciers thinks that everything should be done really, really slowly.”

• “People kill nonhuman animals for food, for their skins, and sometimes just for fun. We enslave animals and force them to work for us. We experiment on them and justify their suffering in terms of our advantage. Because most of us want to be able to view ourselves as good people (and, perhaps more importantly, because we want others to view us as good people), we may be motivated to view nonhumans in such a way that these activities are rendered morally unproblematic. One way to do this is to view other animals as utterly different from us.”

• “We like to think that reason is the supreme adaptation; that rational animals deserve preferential treatment; and that nonhumans, because they don’t have reason, have no intrinsic moral value. However, after Darwin, this is no different and no more convincing than, say, an elephant thinking that trunks are the supreme adaptation; that animals with trunks deserve preferential treatment; and that non-elephants, because they don’t have trunks, have no intrinsic moral value.”

• “if we decide – and this is our decision; it’s not imposed on us from above – if we decide that reducing the amount of suffering in the world is a good ethical principle to live by, then it becomes entirely unjustified and arbitrary to extend this principle to human beings but not also to extend it to other animals capable of suffering. Why should the suffering of nonhumans be less important than that of humans? Surely a universe with less suffering is better than one with more, regardless of whether the locus of suffering is a human being or not, a rational being or not, a member of the moral community or not. Suffering is suffering, and these other variables are morally irrelevant.”

• “The amount of suffering and pain caused by the tyranny of human beings over other animals (particularly in food production) far exceeds that caused by sexism, racism, or any other existing form of discrimination, and for this reason, the animal liberation movement is the most important liberation movement on the face of the planet today.”

• “Tying morality to religion is a little like transporting a precious cargo on a sinking ship. What happens when the child grows up and starts doubting the factual claims of the religion? The cargo may be lost with the ship.”

• “If religion doesn’t make people good, why do people think that it does? Simple: Because religion teaches that it makes people good. It’s part of its sales pitch. But it’s also quite possibly untrue.”

• “Even in a pointless universe, pointless happiness and pleasures are surely preferable to pointless suffering.”

• “Some may find these conclusions frightening, and perhaps that’s an appropriate reaction. But then again, maybe it’s not. For it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize the virtue of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge unflinchingly that there is probably no God, no afterlife, and no soul; that there is no objective basis to morality or higher purpose behind our suffering; that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal cosmos; that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning; and that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away without trace. It is admirable to acknowledge these uncongenial truths, yet to struggle on as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better place anyway, without promise of eternal reward or hope of ultimate victory, and indeed for no good reason at all.”

• “Of course, nothing can be said to argue that people are morally obliged to accept this ethic, for to do so would be inconsistent with the ideas that inspired it in the first place. It is an ethic that will be adopted – if at all – by those who find a certain stark beauty in kindness without reward, joy without purpose, and progress without lasting achievement.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• The universe has no overarching purpose, and most of its parts have no purpose at all. And in the end, it doesn’t matter.

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

• We know that when part of the brain is destroyed, so too is part of the mind. Can we believe that when the brain is completely destroyed, the mind, rather than being completely destroyed also, is instead completely restored?

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• we are here because we evolved, but we are not here for any purpose.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• evolutionary theory undermines the view that morality has an objective foundation, but it won’t turn us into depraved egotists or murderers.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• Occasionally whales are born with hind legs. The evolutionist’s explanation for this is that whales evolved from legged land mammals, and that they still possess the genes involved in the development of hind limbs.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• Our incomprehension in the face of these distant domains of reality is exactly what we’d expect if our minds were a product of natural selection.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• Why can we not appreciate pointless kindness and beauty just as much (or even more) than we would appreciate kindness and beauty that somehow have an ultimate purpose?

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• However, the core point stands: human moral systems are informed by emotions and preferences that have their origin in our evolutionary history.

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• ‘Darwin’s theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in natural science’.3

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

• Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God? Edward O. Wilson (1998), p. 6

  Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• United States
• Darwinism

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Darwinism: Describe this theme.
• Atheism

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Steve Stewart-Williams (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 576

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science › Evolution
• Books › Religion & Spirituality
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Philosophy of Religion
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Ethics & Morality
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Consciousness & Thought
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Philosophy
• Books › Science › Behavioral Sciences

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Amazon.co.uk - DGML Webpage
• Cambridge University Press - DGML Homepage
• Follow Steve Stewart-Williams on Twitter
• Steve's Blog: The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Blog