The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin

The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin

If evolutionary theory is correct, what does that say about creator God? Ever since the famous debate on Darwinism between Huxley and Wilberforce in 1860, there has been little real conversation between the scientific community and much of the Christian world. This book offers the prospect of reconciliation between what are seen as two opposing worldviews. With remarkable insight and skill, Foster shows that most evolutionary theory and its consequences are easily reconciled with Christian orthodoxy and explores the ethical problems of natural selection in a fresh and invigorating way. Charles Foster insists on getting to the heart of the topic and succeeds through a scientific and biblical analysis that is second to none. The Selfless Gene has the potential to become required reading for theologians and laypeople alike. The Selfless Gene LIVING WITH GOD AND DARWIN By Charles Foster Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2009 Charles Foster All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8499-4654-7 Contents Acknowledgments.....................................................................................xiPreface.............................................................................................xiiiChapter 1: The Tangled Bank.........................................................................1Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Cities and Two Bigotries...................................................15Chapter 3: Who's Right? Evidence and the Lack of It.................................................31Chapter 4: Caring and Sharing: The Evolution of Altruism and Community..............................97Chapter 5: The Biology of Awe: The Evolution of Religion............................................117Chapter 6: The Tangled Book: The Creation Accounts in Genesis.......................................124Chapter 7: The Ethical Problem: "... And It Was Very Good"..........................................148Chapter 8: Vegetarian Lions and Fallen Angels: Solutions to the Ethical Problem.....................166Chapter 9: The Ape in the Image: Human Evolution and the Book of Genesis............................201Chapter 10: Living with God and Darwin..............................................................233Notes...............................................................................................239Select Bibliography.................................................................................269Index...............................................................................................275 Chapter One The Tangled Bank It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. - Charles Darwin , The Origin of Species , chapter 14 Imagine, as Darwin did, a tangled bank. To magnify its beauty, brutality, and complexity, imagine that it is in the tropics. It is covered in writhing plants. They wrestle and barge each other. Their roots probe the earth, seeking to take water and nutrients from their neighbors. They do not steal, because nothing holds any title that can be violated. Each organism has what it possesses for the moment. Generally things are taken, not given. There are no rights. The plants trap sunlight in sugar, and that makes them prey. They are crushed and ground between the teeth of herbivores, and their cells are smashed up by enzymes and bacteria in big fermenting tanks. The sunlight therefore flows for a while into the bodies of the herbivores. How long it stays there depends on many things. It depends on the acuity of the herbivore's eyes; on the efficiency with which sodium and potassium gates open and shut in the membranes of its nose nerves; on the integrity of the wiring linking its ears to its legs; on th