Finding Darwin's God VI

Miller, Ken. Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution.New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. ISBN: 978-0061233500.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

In chapter six, entitled “The Gods of Disbelief,” Miller takes on several interlocutors at once with regard to a philosophical outlook called materialism.  Materialism is the philosophical outlook that says that the material/physical universe is all that exists.  If materialism is the correct philosophical outlook, then perhaps there truly is no room for God.  Miller does not take this stance, but instead, looks to question it. 

Materialism is the outlook taken by most of Miller’s opponents in this chapter such as biologists Richard Dawkins and William Provine, Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, Geneticist Richard Lewontin, and Philosopher Daniel Dennet, among others.  In their view, Darwinian evolution is the death knell of the antiquated notion of God.  Since they subscribe to philosophical materialism, and the material universe is all that exists, then there is no longer any place for God since science and evolution by natural selection have been able to explain the material causes of the universe, and even of life itself. There is no place left for a God if all things can be explained through natural cause and effect. 

It is this extreme view, taken by some evolutionary biologists and other scientists, that Miller believes is at the heart of Christian opposition to evolution.  It is not lack of education about the processes of evolution and its lack of explanatory power that accounts for opposition to Darwinism, rather, it is the militantly anti-religious nature of some of the proponents of evolution.  Believers are led to believe that an acceptance of Darwinian evolution necessarily entails a rejection of God.  Yet Miller questions this assumption.  He states that it is an unprovable assumption that lies at the heart of philosophical materialism, namely, that the material world is all there is.  By making this assumption, Dawkins, Dennet, Wilson et. al., have wandered away from science into philosophy. In the same way, religious reactionaries have also fallen into the same assumption, assuming that if Darwinian evolution is true, then philosophical materialism must also be true.  Yet miller questions this assumption.  He claims that there is no necessary logical connection between being able to explain the natural world through science and making the philosophical leap to proclaiming that the natural world is all that there is.  He will set out to question materialism in chapter seven.  Stay tuned.