The Evolution-Creation Struggle

By Michael Ruse

Book Overview

Creation versus evolution: What seems like a cultural crisis of our day, played out in courtrooms and classrooms across the county, is in fact part of a larger story reaching back through the centuries. The views of both evolutionists and creationists originated as inventions of the Enlightenment - two opposed but closely related responses to a loss of religious faith in the Western world. In his latest book, Michael Ruse, a preeminent authority on Darwinian evolutionary thought and a leading participant in the ongoing debate, uncovers surprising similarities between evolutionist and creationist thinking. Exploring the underlying philosophical commitments of evolutionists, he reveals that those most hostile to religion are just as evangelical as their fundamentalist opponents. But more crucially, and reaching beyond the biblical issues at stake, he demonstrates that these two diametrically opposed ideologies have, since the Enlightenment, engaged in a struggle for the privilege of defining human origins, moral values, and the nature of reality. Highlighting modern-day partisans as divergent as Richard Dawkins and Left Behind authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. every stripe and belief and offers to all a new and productive way of understanding this unifying, if often bitter, quest.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674016874
• ISBN13: 9780674016873
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Excellent addition to the literature

I hope I won't be penalized here for just writing a couple of sentences. I found Ruse's book to be very interesting. His analysis of the philosophical history of evolutionary thought is worth the price of the book. I also like that he senses that the debate between proponents of evolution and creationism is really about a much bigger question. I see it as the same question raging in the Middle East right now: will we have a secular or religious based society. I don't think Ruse's book will change any minds - just look at the length and depth of the other reviews and it's easy to see how passionate people feel about these questions. The real value of the book is its dispassionate look at everyone's assumptions and arguments. Should give both sides some firepower.

excellent analysis of the distinction between evolution as science and evolutionism as metaphysics

I think M.Ruse is one of the most profitable authors in the CED(creation-evolution-design) debate, this book is literally(was for me) a once-in-the-door-must-read-now book. The book is an extended look at the distinction between evolution as a professional legitimate science and evolutionism as a metaphysical program which uses the science of biological evolution to create and justify it's moral, societal and eschatological worldview. As such the battle between YEC(young earth creationists) and people like Dawkins, Dennett, Gould, Wilson etc is a religion vs religion battle not as it is mislabelled and misunderstood as a religion vs science battle. This book ought to be required reading for anyone who desires to enter into the innumerable online CED discussions, perhaps then something would actually get to the point of reasonable and fruitful conversations there, for without the distinction the argument is endless and worthless. I sure hope this book gets the eyeball time it deserves, especially from those i see everyday posting the same arguments that are category errors because they lack this distinction. The theme of the book appears on pg3: "The dispute (between evolutionists and creationists), as we shall see, is more than merely a matter of right and wrong. At some deeper level, it involves commitments about the nature of reality and the status and obligations of humans in this reality. In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith--rival stories of origins, rival judgments about the meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologian call rival eschatologies--picture of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind." as he says in a few more pages--this is a clash of rival metaphysical world pictures, evolutionism and creationism. Chapter 1-Christianity and its Discontents Begins with a history lesson, "the Reformation did have repercussions and implications that slowly began to undermine the very foundations of Christianity." pg 13 It is this crisis of faith that Ruse locates both the beginning of creationism and evolutionism, brothers birthed from the same Western culture, responding to the same growth of secular science and the critical and people upsetting social and cultural changes that undermined the religious certainty that had previously glued together medieval European Christendom. "The first reaction to the eighteenth century's crisis of faith was simply to opt out of the conflict. In this view, reason and evidence, made supreme, are tools of the devil, and on the really crucial issues they are deceptive. The way to God is through an open and loving heart, through emotional commitment, not rational choice--that is, through faith and conversion. Thus the Protestantism of the Reformation gave way to evangelicalism, "pg 17 The first separation, the first big battle, is epistemological, something i have come to believe over the ye

Buy this book

With this book Michael Ruse brings some of the fruits of his less accessible scholarship to a popular audience, and it is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on the creation-evolution divide. Unlike the first reviewer on this page, Ruse is an internationally-reputed philosopher of science who knows most of the important living evolutionists personally, and is thus admirably well qualified to speak critically on these matters. His writing style is also one of the most readable and engaging you are likely to find.

Beautifully Written, But Ultimately Less Than Persuasive

Ruse's basic point is that there is evolution - a genuine science of the origin of species that begins, for intents and purposes, with Darwin. There is also a kind of a secular religion -his term - based upon evolution that he terms "evolutionism." Evolutionism is used to advance a particular progressive worldview. Ruse says that that while it would be nice if scientists were not evolutionists, that isn't the case. Contrary to the protestations of some -eg, Stephen Jay Gould - evolution like all science itself does imply certain cultural values. Furthermore, many important evolution scientists, including Edward O. Wilson, used evolution to advance evolutionist positions, eg to comment on biodiversity and the like. While the cruder forms of evolutionism -such as eugenics- can be intellectually discredited easily, Ruse believes that it is probably neither possible nor desirable to pretend that evolution doesn't have implications that challenge the verities of a religious tradition, or that in some sense, the troubling notion of biological "progress" can be avoided. He urges his readers to learn more about the theological and cultural issues that surround the topic of evolution. Good points. And Ruse writes as clear and as beautifully as a summer day on an Icelandic glacier. The problem is that, given the examples he chooses, he's less than compelling in establishing evolutionism as a full-blown "secular" religion. That scientists would "metaphorize" a subject like evolution and believe it has implications that go beyond their science comes as no surprise. But nowhere, in the Wilson that he quotes, for example, do I see evidence of the reliance on faith or the desire for supernatural, ecstatic transcendence that characterizes many religious traditions. Furthermore, the concept of evolutionism is so broad that it encompasses everyone from the eugenicists to Dawkins. That ideologues of all stripes would glom onto the latest trendy science for metaphors has been true since Descartes. This tells us very little about the current controversy. Finally, Ruse all but sidesteps the fact that the present controversy over evolution is tied to the resurgence of the extreme right wing and that many of those advancing anti-science agendas in the US today are political activists exploiting religious traditions rather than true believers. Their interest is not science, but political power. The book is at its most compelling when Ruse argues that all those who oppose the teaching of lies in science classes are going to have to learn to form a coalition despite their differences. Otherwise, creationists (and the so-called "intelligent design" gang) will continue to succeed in injecting religious doctrine into science. After all, there are huge doctrinal differences between Catholics, Protestant evangelicals, and IDiocy advocates like Behe and Dembski; if they can get unite for a common cause, so can those who care about teaching real science to American students