Darwin and atheism (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, November 09, 2012, 18:18 (4208 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: This is the quote by Jacques Barzun that nails down the concept atheists have of Darwin:
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> "In his book Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, Barzun was audacious enough to subject Darwin to a withering barrage of criticism, despite Darwin's heroic status among scientists and academics. Barzun believed in biological evolution. However, he perceptively explained that Darwin's distinctive contribution to European thought was not evolution, which many others had believed before him. No, more importantly Darwin formulated "a theory which explains evolution by natural selection from accidental variations. The entire phrase and not merely the words Natural Selection is important, for the denial of purpose in the universe is carried in the second half of the formula -- accidental variation. This denial of purpose is Darwin's distinctive contention." (2nd ed., pp. 10-11)
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> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/appreciating_hi065951.html
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> dhw:Since Darwin denied ever having been an atheist, and stressed that his theory was compatible with religion, he clearly allowed for the possibility of design and purpose-One gets the impression that Darwin made this statement to mitigate the effect he was having on societal reactions/religion in general and Mrs. Darwin in paticular.- 
> "Barzun declared war on Darwin's theory (but not evolution as such), because he considered it a major influence on "mechanical materialism." He accused Darwinism of undermining belief in mind, consciousness, and purpose."
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> dhw:How do you declare war on Darwin's theory but not evolution as such? Barzun should have declared war on fundamentalist, atheistic interpretations of Darwin's theory. -Because Darwin specifically chose a theory that specifically used chance as the entire driving force. Wallace didn't do that from the same information. 
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> "Barzun also insisted that Darwinism had produced some rather unsavory offspring, such as racism and anti-egalitarianism." However, "He hastened to clarify that he was not holding Darwin (or Marx or Wagner) individually responsible for Nazism or other abominable movements, but he did insist "that the ideas, the methods, the triumph of mechanistic materialism over the flexible and humane pragmatism of the Romantics has been a source of real woe in our day."" (15-16)
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> dhw: Well, that puts the interpreters of Darwin on a par with the interpreters of the Bible and the Koran, whose ideas and methods have been a source of real woe throughout history, right up to the present day. As for the flexible and humane pragmatism of the Romantics, had Barzun never heard of the flexible and humane pragmatism of materialist humanists?-Are you going to ignore Darwin's further works as in 'Descent of Man' where he is patently racist in the extreme?