I’ve been reading a book called Created from Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism by the late philosopher James Rachels. The thesis is that Darwinism does have far-reaching implications for morality, even if not the ones commonly thought. This is in contrast to those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who tried to erect an insuperable wall between the realm of “values” and scientific fact.

Rachels’ long opening chapter, in which he reviews Darwin’s life and the basic argument of the Origin of Species, is extremely clear and compelling, and worth the price of the book alone (well, at least in my case—I picked it up used for around five bucks). Subsequent chapters delve into the more properly philosophical argument about how Darwin’s findings might be related to ethics.

What Rachels is trying to show is that Darwinism pulls the lynchpin of “human dignity” out of our existing moral framework by undermining crucial beliefs that support it. He agrees with many other philosophers that you can’t get an “ought” from an “is”—that is, statements of fact do not logically entail statements of value. But, he argues, our belief in human dignity—by which he means the view that human life is uniquely sacred or valuable—derives its support from certain beliefs about the world and our place in it. Chief among these are one religious belief and one secular philosophical belief: that human beings were specially created (in some sense) in God’s image and that human beings are uniquely rational.

If, as Rachels believes is the case, Darwinism undermines the grounds for these beliefs, then the corresponding normative belief in human dignity will be undermined, even if it is still logically independent of those beliefs. In other words, we could still retain the belief in human dignity as a sheer judgment of value, but without the supporting beliefs (or some substitute), it’s not clear why we should.

So why does Rachels think that Darwinism does in fact undermine these beliefs? For the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the imago dei doctrine. According to Rachels, the traditional view that human beings are created in the divine image means that “the world [was] intended to be [humanity’s] habitation, and everything else in it given for [our] enjoyment and use” (p. 86). The evolutionary picture of the world, Rachels contends, undermines this for several reasons. First, there have existed long stretches of time–billions of years, far and away the vast majority of time–where human beings did not exist and the universe got along just fine without us. Second, Darwinian evolution undermines the view that all things in nature have the form they do in order to serve some human purpose; instead, it sees the forms of creatures as an adaptation to their environment. Finally, the path of evolution doesn’t require us to posit a god to explain the emergence of human life; on strictly scientific grounds, we aren’t required to believe that the existence of human beings is anything other than a fortuitious (for us) outcome of a blind process.

It’s possible, Rachels says, to say that God is the “first cause,” the one who sets up the basic laws of the universe, but whose further intervention isn’t required to explain the emergence and development of life. But even if this is accepted (and he’s not sure that it should be–why not just say that the universe is uncaused?), we’re a long way from the God of the Bible or Judeo-Christian tradition. Such a deistic god doesn’t possess nearly the same religious significance as a more traditional one. At that point, it’s not clear why we’d insist on hanging on the word “god” at all.

Regular readers are probably not terribly surprised to learn that I have some sympathy with Rachels’ argument. Like much of the best atheist and agnostic thought, Rachels’ argument provides the opportuntiy for a purification of religious thought and for smashing a few idols. And surely one of the great idols of the Christian tradition has been precisely the view that creation was made just for us and all other creatures were given for our enjoyment and use. While there are certainly parts of the Bible that support such a view, modern biblical scholars have pointed out that a “humano-centric” interpretation of the Bible (as distinguished from a theo-centric one) is profoundly distorting.

The Bible is clear in many passages that creation exists not for our sake, but for the creator’s sake. God creates all that is and calls it “good” (not “good for us”). After the flood in Genesis, God makes a covenant with all flesh, not just with humanity. The Psalms tell us repeatedly that creatures of land, air, and sea praise their creator in their own language, without the mediation of human beings. God’s admonition to Job is that the creator’s purposes encompass far more than parochial human interests. The apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon praises the mercy and love of the Lord: “you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned.” Jesus insists that our heavenly Father cares for the lillies of the field and the sparrows of the air. St. Paul contends that “all things” are reconciled in Christ and that the entire creation is groaning for liberation from bondage.

Rachels isn’t wrong to see the anthropocentric interpretation as the dominant one in Christian history. This may have been encouraged by a secular philosophy that defined the imago primarily as reason and free will, thus emphasizing the distinction between human beings and other creatures. A more “functionalist” understanding of humanity’s role as caretakers or gardeners of the earth, by contrast, emphasizes our embededness in and responsibility to the rest of creation.

If this alternate narrative is right, then the evolutionary story can be seen in a different perspective. Human beings are one among millions of species in whom God takes delight. The story of creation is more of an open-ended process than a static, once-and-for-all act, one that gives rise to a multiplicity of beings that reflect some facet of the divine goodness.

And the creator has many purposes, or many stories to tell. The overarching story is that of God’s overflowing goodness in creating other beings, beings with whom God wishes to share God’s self. Within that story are sub-plots, like that of humanity. Instead of seeing humanity as the jewel of creation, maybe a truer story would be that we are the prodigal son of creation, the ones who go off and squander the riches left to us by our Father. But the Father is constantly calling us back, willing to mend the broken relationship between us so that we can be restored to our proper place in the household. This isn’t a measure of how great we are, but of how great God’s love is.

I’m not claiming to have solved all the problems evolutionary thought poses for religion (far from it!), but in this case I think a better understanding of the natural world can actually point us to a deeper understanding of our faith. (I’ll likely have more to say about Rachels’ moral project in a later post.)