The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict

281 Pages·2018·2.29 MB·English

by  Michael Ruse

The Problem of War

The Problem of War
Darwinism, Christianity, anD their
Battle to UnDerstanD hUman ConfliCt
Michael Ruse
3
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ruse, Michael, author.
Title: The problem of war: Darwinism, christianity, and
their battle to understand human conflict / Michael Ruse.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018012153 | ISBN 9780190867577 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780190867591 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Social Darwinism. | War—Religious aspects—Christianity. |
War—Psychological aspects. | Darwin, Charles, 1809–1882—Influence.
Classification: LCC HM631.R87 2019 | DDC 303.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012153
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
To the memories of
Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant William J. Ruse, my great-g randfather;
of Staff Sergeant William A. Ruse, my grandfather;
and of William R. E. Ruse, my father.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
CONTENTS
Prolegomenon ix
1 Darwinian Evolutionary Theory 1
2 Darwinism as Religion 19
3 Two Visions of War 47
4 Darwinism After Darwin 66
5 Onward Christian Soldiers 86
6 The Biology of War 105
7 Realists and Pacifists 120
8 From Hitler to UNESCO 138
9 The Bomb and Vietnam 158
10 Darwinian Theory Comes of Age 175
11 Rival Paradigms 203
12 Moving Forward 217
Bibliography 233
Index 249

PROLEGOMENON
T
oward the end of 1859, the English naturalist Charles Robert
Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of the Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life. In that book, Darwin did two things. He argued for the
fact of evolution, that all organisms are descended from just a few forms
by natural processes, tracing what he called a “tree of life.” He argued for
a particular force or mechanism of change, natural selection brought on
by the struggle for existence. Today’s professional evolutionists are com-
mitted Darwinians. They think that natural selection is the chief cause of
change, and they use this conviction to great effect, explaining organisms
right across the spectrum, from the smallest microforms like E. coli to
the largest of them all: whales, dinosaurs, giant redwood trees. If ever
there was an example of what Thomas Kuhn called a “scientific revolu-
tion,” with Darwinian selection at the center of a successful “paradigm,”
this is it.
Yet, all is not happy in the Darwinian world. The very idea of evolution
is under attack from the religious right, generally evangelical Christians.
Even where some kind of change is allowed, it is felt that Darwinian se-
lection can play at best only a minor role. From the so-c alled Scientific
Creationists of the 1960s and 1970s, who denied that the Earth is more
than six thousand years old and who claimed that all organisms were
created miraculously in six days, to the Intelligent Design Theorists of the
1990s who insist that history is guided by an intelligence from without,
Darwinian evolutionary theory is denied and held up for scorn (Numbers
2006; Dembski and Ruse 2004). It is felt that Darwinism is not just wrong,
but in some sense deeply disturbing, off on the wrong moral foot as it