G.K. Chesterton: Darwinism is ‘An attack upon thought itself’
by Lita Cosner
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G.K. Chesterton
Published: 12 November 2008(GMT+10)
G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific British writer,
whose poetry, fiction, books and essays argued for a Christian1 worldview in the early 20th century,
long before the term ‘worldview’ was coined. He did this not only in
traditional apologetics works (though some, like Heretics and Orthodoxy,
may be categorized as such), but in everything, as he saw the potential for everything
to be for or against Christ (cf. Matthew 12:30). Many of his works addressing social and
moral issues are still relevant today, as he was able to foresee the effects of
many of the destructive influences of his day. His works were very influential on
the thought of Christian apologist
and author C.S. Lewis (1898–1963).
The worship of science
As early as 1920, G.K. Chesterton argued against what he saw to be the worship of
science (now sometimes called ‘scientism’),
which already was being invoked in education and ethics.2 He also observed nearly a century ago that Darwinist
scientists were more and more
turning their science into a philosophy.3
These scientists were forbidden by their own belief system from believing in miracles,
regardless of where the evidence
led. This led inevitably to scientists making bizarre claims as to what
natural processes alone could accomplish. ‘Things that the old science at
least would frankly have rejected as miracles are hourly being asserted by the new
science.’4
Chesterton conceded that these materialists were completely logical and reasonable
in their belief system, but that it was a very small internal consistency which
denied even the possibility of
miracles; their belief system explained everything by natural events, which
can be logical enough (bearing in mind that there is a difference between logical
consistency and truth), but because that was the central tenet of their ideology,
they could not admit even one miracle. He argued that the orthodox Christian was
freer than the materialist because Christians could believe in both natural and
supernatural causes for events; Christianity can explain both physical laws and
miracles. As Chesterton wrote:
As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It
has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of
it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.—Chesterton
‘The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have
evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because
they have a doctrine against them.’5
This, he argues, makes for ‘a sort of insane simplicity’ to the materialist
worldview:
‘As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity.
It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense
of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. … He
understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos
may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than
our world.’6
‘That modern intelligence which destroys itself’
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G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton’s statements about evolution as a scientific theory are sometimes
ambiguous and might even be taken as supportive of a
theistic evolutionary stance; for instance, he states that even if biological
evolution were true, it would not mean that Christianity was false, because God
is outside of time and could do things any way He wanted7 (obviously, not a view that CMI would endorse; e.g. see
10 dangers of theistic evolution). However, other writings contain quite
clear anti-evolution statements, especially when the implications of Darwinism are
applied to philosophy. (One might also note that Chesterton’s anti-evolutionary
statements are much more consistent with the rest of his thought and writing; and
one can hardly expect such a large body of non-inspired writing to be entirely consistent
or accurate!) He said of evolution so applied that it ‘is a good example of
that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself.’7
One of Chesterton’s main complaints against Darwinism is that it was advanced
as a fact long before it was even a well-established hypothesis (which some of Darwin’s
eminent scientific contemporaries also pointed out, e.g.
German museum director, Dr Johann Blasius). Chesterton argued that it would
have been more productive to discover ‘what is actually known about the variation
of species and what can only plausibly be guessed and what is quite random guesswork’,
but ‘the Darwinians advanced it with so sweeping and hasty an intolerance
that it is no longer a question of one scientific theory being advanced against
another scientific theory. … It is treated as an answer; and a final and
infallible answer.’8
He noted that even the most ardent evolutionists seemed hesitant in defending Darwinism
in his day:
‘Huxley said, in his later years, that Darwin’s suggestion had never
been shown to be inconsistent with any new discovery; and anybody acquainted with
the atmosphere will be struck by the singular note of negation in that. When Huxley
began to write, he certainly expected that, by the end of his life, Darwin’s
suggestion would have been confirmed by a crowd of positive discoveries. Now nobody
talks of it at present as a settled scientific law. Even the critic who complained
of my own remark called Darwinism a “hypothesis”, and admitted that
it had been “profoundly modified”. And he added the very singular and
significant phrase: that the Darwinian hypotheses was still “that most sound
at bottom.” If anyone does not hear the negative note in that, I think he
does not know the sound of human voice.’9
‘If an ignorant man went about saying that the earth was flat, the scientific
man would promptly and confidently answer, “Oh, nonsense; of course it’s
round.” He might even condescend to give the real reasons, which I believe
are quite different from the current ones. But when the private citizen rushes wild-eyed
down the streets of Heliopolis, Neb., calling out “Have you heard the news?
Darwin’s wrong!” the scientific man does not say, “Oh, nonsense,
of course he’s right.” He says tremulously, “Not entirely wrong;
surely not entirely wrong”; and we can draw our conclusions.’10
Anti-evolution arguments
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G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton argued that ‘nobody need know any more than the mere rudiments
of the biological controversy in order to know that, touching twenty incidental
problems, [evolution] is in some ways a very unsatisfactory answer.’8 Several
of Chesterton’s arguments against evolution sound very much like modern creationist
arguments:
‘I do not know the true reason for a bat not having feathers; I only know
that Darwin gave a false reason
for its having wings. And the more the Darwinians explain, the more certain
I become that Darwinism was wrong. All their explanations ignore the fact that Darwinism
supposes an animal feature to appear first, not merely in an incomplete stage, but
in an almost imperceptible stage. The member of a sort of mouse family, destined
to found the bat family, could only have differed from his brother mice by some
minute trace of membrane; and why should that enable him to escape out of a natural
massacre of mice? Or even if we suppose it did serve some other purpose, it could
only be by a coincidence; and this is to imagine a million coincidences accounting
for every creature. A special providence watching over a bat would be a far more
realistic notion than such a run of luck as that.’11,12
Chesterton also questioned the usefulness of partially formed structures in animals;
a wing that enables flight is undoubtedly an advantage to a creature, but a
half-formed wing is of no use. ‘Yet Darwinism pre-supposes that numberless
generations could survive before one generation could fly.’13
He also accuses the evolutionists of not having enough
evidence in the fossil record for their claims:
‘I do not demand anything, in the sense of complaining anything [sic] or the
absence of anything. I am quite comfortable in a completely mysterious cosmos. I
am not reviling the rocks or cursing the eternal hills for not containing these
things. I am only saying that these are the things they would have to contain to
make me believe something that somebody else wants me to believe. These traces are
not things that the Anti-Darwinian demands. They are things that the Darwinian requires.
The Darwinian requires them in order to convince his opponent of Darwinism; his
opponent may be right or wrong, but he cannot be expected to accept the mere absence
of them as proof of Darwinism. If the evidences in support of the theory are unfortunately
hidden, why then, we do not know whether they were in support of the theory. If
the proofs of natural selection are lost,14
why then, there are no proofs of natural selection; and there is an end of it.
And I would respectfully ask these critics what would be thought of a theological
or miraculous argument which thus based itself on the very gaps in its own evidence.’13
If the evidences in support of the theory [of Darwinism] are unfortunately hidden,
why then, we do not know whether they were in support of the theory.—Chesterton
on the ‘missing links’.
Chesterton on evolutionary philosophy
As dubious as the scientific claims of evolution seemed to Chesterton, the
philosophic implications of Darwinism were to him the more dangerous threat.
The first problem evolutionists have is that of how to relate to other creatures.
Evolutionists may be very cruel to other animals; after all, under the doctrine
of ‘survival of the fittest’, even the most gratuitous and painful actions
can justified as helping natural selection along. Or on the opposite end of the
spectrum (which is vastly more common today), an evolutionist may elevate animals
to the status of humans, like those who wish to give
human rights to apes, on the basis that we are all related, so humans are
not entitled to any special status.
Chesterton ably pointed out the follies of such Darwinian reality compared to the
sane morality revealed in Scripture:
‘Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used
to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures
can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not
for a healthy love of animals … That you and a tiger are one may be a reason
for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being cruel as the tiger.
It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate
the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably,
that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.
‘If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of
Eden. For the obstinate reminder continues to recur: only the supernaturalist has
taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism and modern
cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately,
if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a stepmother. The main
point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.
We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority
over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.’15
Not only have evolutionists failed to answer the relatively simple questions that
Chesterton put forward, creationists have more arguments than ever against the increasingly
contrived pro-evolutionary stance.
The more dangerous implication of evolutionism is how it permits us to treat our
fellow man. Chesterton saw the possibility that the more powerful could use evolutionary
arguments to exploit the disadvantaged—we have not seen his fanciful predictions
of people bred exactly for their intended professions,16 but the evolutionary philosophy did produce
eugenics in America and to an even more extreme degree in
Germany. There, ‘unfit’ individuals were forcibly sterilized,
and in the case of the Nazi death camps, exterminated for the sake of what was seen
to be the ideal for the human race. While few today would advocate such tactics,
evolutionary philosophy has substantially devalued the human life, as can be witnessed
by the millions of abortions which take place every year in America alone, especially
if the baby has
Down’s Syndrome or some deformity—most of these handicapped
children never had a chance to take their first breath. And there are evolutionists like
Eric Pianka and John Reid
who wouldn’t mind a drastic reduction in the human population to ‘save
the planet’.
Chesterton was able to see how the ideas in his day might affect thought in the
future, and argued against what he saw the consequences of such flawed ideas to
be. It is revealing that in nearly a century since he penned his arguments against
evolution and Darwinism, those same arguments are as relevant today as they were
in the early 20th century. Darwinism was open to serious attack then,
and with the vast gain in scientific information, not only have evolutionists failed
to answer the relatively simple questions that Chesterton put forward, creationists
have more arguments than ever against the increasingly contrived pro-evolutionary
stance, which has resorted to
teaching falsehoods to gain converts.
Staunch defender
Chesterton also successfully debated some of the leading anti-Christians of his
day, such as George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow.17 Against Darrow, he was
much more successful than William
Jennings Bryan, winning the audience vote about 2–1. One report stated:
‘At the conclusion of the debate everybody was asked to express his opinion
as to the victor and slips of paper were passed around for that purpose. The award
went directly to Chesterton. Darrow in comparison, seemed heavy, uninspired, slow
of mind, while G.K.C. was joyous, sparkling and witty …. quite the Chesterton
one had come to expect from his books. The affair was like a race between a lumbering
sailing vessel and a modern steamer. Mrs. Frances Taylor Patterson also heard the
Chesterton-Darrow debate, but went to the meeting with some misgivings because she
was a trifle afraid that Chesterton’s “gifts might seem somewhat literary
in comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the famous trial
lawyer. Instead, the trained scientific mind, the clear thinking, the lightning
quickness in getting a point and hurling back an answer, turned out to belong to
Chesterton. I have never heard Mr. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when that
relativity is to Chesterton, he appears positively muddle-headed.”
I was favorably impressed by, warmly attached to, G.K. Chesterton. I enjoyed my
debates with him, and found him a man of culture and fine sensibilities.—Famous
atheistic lawyer Clarence Darrow, who decisively lost a debate with him.
‘ … As Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing
all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and the latter kept sparring with a
dummy of his own mental making. When something went wrong with the microphone, Darrow
sat back until it could be fixed. Whereupon G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his
natural voice, “Science you see is not infallible!” Whatever brilliance
Darrow had in his own right, it was completely eclipsed. For all the luster that
he shed, he might have been a remote star at high noon drowned by the bright incandescent
are [sic] light of the sun. Chesterton had the audience with him from the
start, and when it was over, everyone just sat there, not wishing to leave.
…
Ostensibly the defender of science against Mr. Chesterton, [Darrow] obviously knew
much less about science than Mr. Chesterton did; when he essayed to answer his opponent
on the views of Eddington and Jeans, it was patent that he did not have the remotest
conception of what the new physics was all about.’18
Yet these opponents greatly respected him and considered him a friend. This would
be like Richard Dawkins expressing warm friendship towards Henry Morris at a much
later time. For example, Shaw said:
‘The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton.’
And Darrow wrote:
‘I was favorably impressed by, warmly attached to, G.K. Chesterton. I enjoyed
my debates with him, and found him a man of culture and fine sensibilities.’
Further reading
Related resources
References
- Chesterton was a Roman Catholic, but most of his works defend
generic Christianity as defined by the ancient Apostle’s Creed, accepted by
most Christian denominations. Return to text.
- Ahlquist, D., Common Sense 101:
Lessons from G.K. Chesterton, p. 117, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006.
Return to text.
- Chesterton, G.K. ‘The religious aim of education’
in
The Spice of Life, and Other Essays, 1965. Online text: Return
to text.
- Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 8, ‘The
romance of orthodoxy’, 1908. Return to text.
- Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 9, ‘Authority
and the Adventurer’. Return to text.
- Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 2, ‘The
maniac’. Return to text.
- Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 3, ‘The
suicide of thought’. Return to text.
- Chesterton,
As I was saying, chapter 32 ‘About Darwinism’, 1936.
Return to text.
- Chesterton, ‘Doubts
about Darwinism’, The Illustrated London News, 17 July 1920.
Return to text.
- Chesterton, ‘The evolution of slaves’, in
Fancies Versus Fads, 1923. Return to text.
- Chesterton, ‘On
Darwinism and mystery’, Illustrated London News, 21 August 1920.
Return to text.
- Indeed, the recent book
Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome by Dr John Sanford, inventor of
the gene gun, provides quantitative support for this. Sanford demonstrates that
most mutations are too small to be affected by natural selection (i.e. are neutral),
so most selective effects would be swamped by genetic drift and chance happenings,
just as Chesterton realized intuitively. Return to text.
- Chesterton, ‘Is Darwinism dead?’, in
Fancies versus fads, 1923. Return to text.
- Chesterton’s context here appears to refer to missing
fossil evidence, i.e. proof that natural selection has changed one type of creature
into a completely different one. He does not appear to be saying that there is no
proof of natural selection itself, which creationists generally agree is a commonsense
proposition but a culling, rather than a creative mechanism. Return
to text.
- Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 7, ‘The
eternal revolution’. Return to text.
- See Chesterton, ‘The empire of the insect’ in
What’s wrong with the world, 1910. Return to text.
- Dale Ahlquist, Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard
of him? American Chesterton Society, chesterton.org/discover/who.html.
Return to text.
- Cited in ‘Chesterton v Darrow debate’, American
Chesterton Society,
http://chesterton.org/qmeister2/darrowdebate.htm, 2000. Return
to text.
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