Evolution ‘explains away’ theology?The
most recent challenge to theology comes from the emerging fields of
sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. They attempt to offer an account of
religious behaviour in terms of the reproductive fitness it confers on its
adherents. Where religious believers claim that the body of theological wisdom
has been in part revealed by God, sociobiology purports to show how all beliefs
and practices are a natural human invention, and have been retained because
they contribute to the survival of the group. The most outspoken advocate of
this view is E.O. Wilson. He expects that “the final decisive edge enjoyed by
scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional
religion, its chief competition, as a wholly material phenomenon. Theology is
not likely to survive as an independent intellectual discipline.” What
difference would it make if Wilson is correct? While it appears that a
sociobiological account explains religion away, it also provides a
justification for its continuance since it is adaptive - by definition - at
least while the environment in which it evolved persists. Other evolutionary
thinkers are more hostile. Dennett suggests that religious ideas should be
preserved, but in contained environments or in a ‘denatured state.’ When
we look up at a sky full of stars we are sometimes caught up in the wonder of
it, and are tempted to draw upon religious vocabulary in our response. Einstein
spoke of his sense of a “cosmic religious feeling.” Peter Atkins, however, an
outspoken advocate of the ‘omnicompetence’ of science, offers a different view:
“Awe stultifies. Think of the universe as a puff of dust about a metre in
diameter. Every dust grain is a galaxy. We live near a rather ordinary star
which is a member of a rather ordinary galaxy somewhere insignificant in the
puff of dust.”
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