Pointless Waffle: Conor Cunningham Has A New Book

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Last time I wrote about this, Conor Cunningham was just releasing his documentary "Did Darwin Kill God?" I responded to Conor Cunningham's interviews on the subject, having not yet got around to watching the documentary itself. I have since seen the documentary and can say pretty confidently that the book is, in all likelihood, a load of pointless waffle.

Last time I checked out Conor Cunningham's arguments he was claiming that eugenics is the social consequence of Darwinism (because clearly the whole principle of killing off the weaker members of society would never have been considered prior to Darwin's theory of evolution).

The main reasons I didn't comment on the tv documentary were firstly because it was so awful that I didn't think it was worth critiqueing and secondly because comments I found on various blogs were much more apt than I felt I could be. In the end, what would have been the point in adding another commentary about an old documentary that no one was likely to take an interest? However, now that this documentary has won an award and a new book is coming out, I feel it is necessary to express precisely why I think Cunningham's argument is load of old tripe.

Genesis and Early Christianity

After spending a while narrating over dramatic music, expressing the typical modern view of the debate which he wishes to discredit as well as establishing himself as both a supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution and a committed Christian (and occasionally posing), he finally gets started on some arguments. The very first point he makes is that Genesis chapter 1 and 2 contradict one another. He's quite right too. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 feature two separate accounts of the creation of the Earth. This is also true of the story of Noah. In Genesis chapter 6 Noah is simply told to collect two of every animal, but in chapter 7 the instructions are altered and instead Noah is asked to collect two of every unclean animal, but seven of every clean (or kosher) animal.

What we're missing at this stage is why a contradiction in the Bible is supposed to tell us not to take the story literally. Sure those compiling the Bible had two versions of the Noah story, so they included both. Does that really mean that they didn't think Noah actually existed? That they thought there was no global (or at very least, highly devastating) flood in which a family was saved by divine will? Hmmm...

Actually Cunningham's argument is that since Philo Of Alexandria and St. Augustine both encouraged a more allegorical understanding, that must therefore have been the consistent view of the majority of Christians throughout history. Needless to say, I'm not convinced. Finding backing in Philo and Augustine is handy for modern theologians, but it doesn't erase the history between them and us, nor can their words be considered without also remembering that they never had anything like the theory of evolution in mind. (Augustine believed that the Genesis story demonstrated smaller things developing into larger things, but to say that this is the same as the theory of evolution is more than a little naive.)

Cunningham takes this moment to quickly tell us that orthodox Christianity does not say that God arbitrarily intervenes, but rather that God is always present. This is viewed as some kind of important loophole, since the idea that God is always present clearly isn't being presented as a stance whereby extraordinary miracles do not take place, but is simply a metaphysical tool to suggest that miracles are part of nature rather than over and above it. The thing is that in the actual scheme of things you still have the same result, miracles are events which defy what we'd normally expect from the workings of nature.

Can I just take this moment to note that even with a God who works within creation, that doesn't mean that the old Church fathers didn't believe in a literal Adam and Eve (albeit perhaps not in a literal garden of Eden). The idea that nature began with a single man and woman seemed natural at the time and it wasn't until more modern times that we realised that two humans could not have sucessfully produced the human race. St. Paul compares Jesus Christ to Adam and he no more thinks of Adam as a fiction than he thinks of Jesus that way. (Perhaps that's a good place to stop that particular conversation...)

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Traditional Eastern Orthodox ikon where Jesus is featured in the Adam and Eve story. Pretty cool huh?

Ussher and the KJV

Naturally, like a good Catholic, Cunningham blames creationism on the protestant reformation. Having been told in an interview with a Roman Catholic priest called Father Gregory Tatum that the Bible speaks in mythological language, it seems clear to him that that this must have always been the Church's position from the very beginning. It couldn't possibly that the Church has learnt from its mistakes through things like the Copernicus and Galileo fiasco and has realised that it needs to make space in its dogma for scientific research. Let's also not forget that mythological language can only be called that now because we have a distinction between natural and supernatural. The whole idea of a contrast between mythological and literal didn't exist in the same way in the past because we did not have a whole scientific body of knowledge which sought to categorise what was possible and what was not. Today someone might have an experience with a ghost which is important regardless of whether the ghost exists or not, but if they start trying to push the importance of their experience on others the question of whether ghosts are possible becomes more relevant. In the past, the issue of whether ghosts are possible would not have been the focus since various kinds of spirits were pretty much taken for granted.

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Ghost stories and Christian mythology. What's the difference?

So, having confirmed that creationism is all the reformation's fault, Cunningham now introduces us to James Ussher, the bishop who decided that the world was around 6000 years old.  He presents him as if he were some kind of renegade bishop rather than noting his actual title as Primate of Ireland. It becomes even more ludicrous when Cunningham says "Ussher's calculation would have remained, at best, an interesting if eccentric speculation were it not for the fact that it made it into every page of the King James Bible. The most widely read edition of the Bible for the next 300 years." So let me get this straight. His ideas would have been lost were it not for them having been published (in the KJV) and continuing to be accepted for many centuries. Wow, what a discovery. Yet apparently in spite of a young earth creationist timeline being published in every copy of the most popular English translation of the Bible Cunningham nevertheless informs us "despite this, traditional Christianity prevailed. The book of Genesis was not to be read literally."

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Admittedly, the idea that the KJV came straight from heaven is a distinctly protestant lunacy.

Fossils In The Nineteenth Century

Next we are told that in the nineteenth century everyone had access to fossils and were often busy collecting them. We are also told the main people discovering dinosaur remains and dating them were clergymen. Naturally these fossils were older than Ussher's dating of the Earth and thus utterly refuted his bogus timeline. This is all, of course, true.

Unfortunately, this doesn't show that the belief in a literal creation was unheard of. In fact the Anglican clergyman who first described a dinosaur in a scientific journal, William Buckley. Buckley was himself a believer in a (literal) global flood, but he disagreed with contemporaries who viewed the fossils in a particular cave as having been washed there by flood waters. This is essentially what is missing in Cunningham's interview at the museum at this stage. He fails to notice that while their nineteenth century thinkers are happily denying a "young Earth" timeline, the possibility of an "old Earth" timeline is actually being given much more serious attention. Another prominent figure during this time was Georges Cuvier who established that certain animals had become extinct, contrary to the prevailing opinion that God would never allow this to happen. But if you were to believe Cunningham this was all a storm in a teacup and quite irrelevant to the opinions of Christians of the time. *facepalm*

Cunningham quotes the beginning of a John Henry Newman quote which seemingly supports Darwin:

As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvellous Wisdom and Design to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the long course of those ages, those effects which He from the first proposed. Mr. Darwin's theory need not then to be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill.

However, he misses out the following sentence:

Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design — It is accidental to us, not to God

One might just as easily say this about someone spilling milk. For us the spilt milk may be accidental, but in God's plan it might have been essential. All this does is to note the issues of God's infallible foresight and metaphysical determinism. It doesn't change the fact that in the general scheme of things, the evolution of organic beings is most certainly "accidental". The idea that the creature best-suited to their environment will survive while those around them less-suited to their environment will perish is a sign of divine presience and skill shows a clear lack of understanding of evolutionary theory and perhaps it is unsurprising then that John Henry Newman admits to never having studied the question when he makes this comment. Obviously, I am not saying that John Henry Newman was a creationist, but simply that it is easy for a clergyman to insist that evolution poses no problems when he has not yet understood the theory.

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Yes, I know this image is from AIG. No, I don't have any idea what they are trying to say.

Darwin's Atheism

Next up, Cunningham insists that Darwin didn't lose his faith because of evolution. He's technically right. Darwin lost his faith because of the problem of suffering in nature which has taxed theologians for centuries. However, it was his study of nature when constructing his theory of evolution which led him to this particular doubt. In stating his doubts about God in relation to suffering he makes specific reference to the religious ideas surrounding "design" in nature by a divine creator:

There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

While Cunningham claims that Darwin's rejection of Christianity is firmly tied to the death of his daughter, he claims to have doubted Christianity (on the basis on those supposedly allegorical myths - Darwin clearly didn't read enough Augustine *facepalm*) earlier than that when he was in his late twenties:

DURING THESE two years [October 1836 to January 1839] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian

To back up Cunningham's personal views on this, instead of interviewing a typical historian he instead chooses to talk to Nick Spencer from the think tank Theos.

Cunningham's proof that Darwin had not killed God (which is, of course, a pretty dodgy phrase anyway) is that

Britain was actually more religious at the end of the ninteenth century than it was in the 1830s.

What Cunningham seems to be forgetting is that it was at this time when the fundamentalists were beginning to rise up. The document "The Fundamentals" was written in 1910 and the sentiments contained in that volume undoubtedly preceded its publication. Interestingly George Frederick Wright, who wrote the section of "The Fundamentals" opposing evolution, was originally a supporter of Darwin's theory (nevertheless believing the humanity was an act of "special creation"). His view on this changed in 1890.

Cunningham also notes that Darwin claimed that there was no reason why a Christian should not accept his theory of evolution. However, it was mostly Christians who would be reading the book and the last thing Darwin wanted to do was pose his theory as contradicting their faith. Naturally the theory of evolution says nothing about the initial arrival of life but simply concerns its development, so it could never rule out a God anyway, but Cunningham seems to be suggesting that it didn't ruffle any feathers either. 

The Scopes Trial

Cunningham voices a point from Stephen Jay Gould that the prosecutor in the Scopes Trial, William Jennings Bryan, was opposed to Evolution because it was being used to propose genetics. There does appear to be good reason to agree with this. One article sums up Gould's interpretation of the situation as follows:

In the early 1920s, German militarists, laissez faire capitalists, and scientific eugenicists cited Darwin as support for their own questionable policies. “Survival of the fittest” became a reason to deny economic and medical support to the poor. Efforts to breed a new superior race of humans captivated thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic. Textbooks treating the subject of evolution, including the Civic Biology book used by Scopes, misunderstood Darwin’s theory and turned it into an apology for racism and forced sterilization.

Even a website opposing the ridiculous Creationist movie "Expelled" serves to back up this point by noting a section of Darwin's "Descent Of Man" originally quoted by Bryan during the trial:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

They note that the very next sentence undermines Ben Stein's assertions that Darwinism and Eugenics are connected:

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

However, unlike Stein, Bryan would have been living during a period where he saw such misquotes being used all over the place. Bryan was opposing what for many people would have been a perfectly acceptable viewpoint.

Of course, creationists have long had their own racists. When researching some key terms in a fairly old English dictionary related to an English lesson about the poem "half caste" I came across the view that the world consists of three races. This same view was recently linked with the story of Noah on a sign at a creationist-run zoo:
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Ah, education at its finest.

However, the point here is not to start pointing moralistic fingers. The main issue when dealing with creationism and evolution is truth and on that point Cunningham knows which side to fall on. The point I wish to make here, however, is that racist ideas were (and are) being banded about by everyone, not just "Darwinists". Similarly creationist ideas were being banded about quite a bit more than Cunningham is letting on. They might not have much backing from Roman Catholic tradition, but Cunningham's argument hasn't been phrased that way. Instead he seems to be suggesting that creationism is a wholly modern issue. The reason for this stance is quite simple. Cunningham is a supporter of Radical Orthodoxy which blames the problems with theology on modernity (which it claims to be overrun by nihilism) while also suggesting that we all go back to pre-modern theological ideas. The idea that creationism is all modernity's fault ties in rather nicely with Cunningham's Radical Orthodoxy movement, but the problem is that it is simply not true.

Finally Cunningham suggests that William Jennings Bryan had a more "sophisticated" creationism than the kind we see today because he was an "old Earth" creationist. However, as we already saw earlier, "young Earth" creationism actually came first (um.. hello? Ussher? Remember?) and the fossil discoveries during the nineteenth century served to make "old Earth creationism more common. The resurgence of YECs is partly because evolution is so much better supported. The arguments for creationism now require full-on rejection of the existing scientific consensus and, as such, the age of the Earth has gone out with the rest of the babies in the bathwater.

Modern Creationism

Cunningham rightly notes that modern creationism attempts to put itself forward as an alternative to science. Perhaps I should give him credit for noting that this is not terribly sophisticated. I should also probably give some credit to him for recognising how ridiculous the creationist museum is when Michael Ruse, a philosopher of biology, failed to do so.

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Oddly Cunningham doesn't think this resembles the Christianity he grew up with.

"Ultra-Darwinism"

Ultra-Dawinists like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins claim that evolution means there cannot be a God.

*STRAW MAN ALERT!* *STRAW MAN ALERT!*

Sorry, what the hell? Let's just clear this up, he's just finished an interview with Daniel Dennett where he explains that evolution is a purely natural process where God is not involved. That, might I remind you, is Cunningham's view too! Dennett then explains that the religious view sees purpose everywhere and the theory of evolution shows us that this isn't really purpose but is simply the mechanical laws of nature. Now sure, Cunningham will want to say that God is all around him and that God has a purpose, but I don't really see that he has much reason to dismiss Dennett's basic summation of evolution.

Also apparently Cunningham thinks the Human Genome Project has disproven Dawkins "Selfish Gene" idea. It doesn't sound like either Francis Collins or Conor Cunningham are terribly familiar with the book, which is odd since I'm fairly sure Cunningham has read it. Really odd.

Ooooh and Michael Ruse turns up! :p

It's the interview with Susan Blackmore about Mimetics where the show goes completely daft however. At this point I think I am best off quoting what other bloggers have written:

Where Conor sees a real threat to "god" is with the subject of "memes" and its proponents the feared "Ultra Darwinists". Dr Susan Blackmore (one of these presumably) hove on the scene with a twinkle in her eye to discuss the subject of "memes". This was at a railway station if memory serves me correctly; perhaps to give the impression that she was in a hurry. At any rate she wasn't allowed to get very far. The conversation was obviously not going in a helpful direction.
(Nuts And Reasons)

The topic was memetics: the idea that ideas are replicating units that evolve as they spread from one mind to another. Memetics was originally just a thought experiment about hypothetical units of evolution analogous to genes, but was fleshed out, for example by Daniel Dennett and Sue Blackmore. Now, Sue Blackmore is great, but if Cunningham really knew the state of evolutionary thinking, he would know that she does not really represent even "ultra-Darwinists". But Cunningham drags her to Salisbury so that they can do an interview in the station car park. Brilliantly, he discovers a fatal flaw in the theory of memes -- one that he seems to think somehow has important consequences for the credibility of Richard Dawkins and the God hypothesis: if memes are true, evolution is itself a meme!
... so what?
Well, think about it. If evolution is a meme, it's just a parasite in our mind, and not true! Memes destroy the truth of evolution!
Uhm. But-
Ultra-Darwinists have never been able to answer this problem!
Oh ... kay.
Cunningham clearly really does truly believe that his brain has just done something brilliant. I suspect he is correct in stating that "ultra-Darwinists" have never been able to answer the "problem", since I have difficulty believing that anyone would ever before have managed to think of it and say it out loud before noticing what an utterly and humiliatingly ridiculous thing it would be to say.
As an aside, it is interesting to consider truth and memes. Under the theory of memetics, the idea that truth is of value would itself be a meme (and a very meritorious one). In the Selfish Gene, Dawkins talks about the need for genes to cooperate, or to put it another way, selfish genes have to be able to survive in an environment that contains many other selfish genes. Analogously, memes have to survive in an environment of other memes. Scientists, for example, host a series of memes for methods of filtering the non-true memes that might be trying to infect them. Skepticism, rationalism, logic, reason, and empiricism are memes that are also meme filters. But many people do not host them. Others fail to recognise the truth in a meme because it conflicts with false memes that they are already hosting. Some people do not even host the truth-valuing meme.
Cotch dot net

I know it was an hour program, but his response felt shallow. After allowing Susan Blackmore to explain her case, he argued against it in a matter of seconds - asserting that such a case is absurd and that there's no counter argument to this.
Kelosophy



I don't really think there's much point in reading Cunningham's book, but I've got a horrible feeling I'm going to be hearing a lot about it in the future. *groan*

Quick irrelevant side-note:
In my research for this I was interested discover the following note from Mrs. Darwin (annotating Charles Darwin's autobiography):

Nothing can be said too severe upon the doctrine of everlasting punishment for disbelief—but very few now wd. call that 'Christianity,' (tho' the words are there.)

~If there is a problem with the information I've found in wikipedia links please correct me (and them too preferably).~