Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?

Ruse has written an accessible book that presents a concise account of the progress of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Ruse, however, tended to use "evolution" without emphasizing the importance of "natural selection" as a fundamental aspect of the theory. He might have found it necessary to downplay the force of "Darwinism" to create more elbow room for his "natural theology". What is this book really about, and what is Ruse's true position? These are questions that remain no matter how many times we read this book. After stating that "Those Christians committed to natural theology were right to be concerned about Darwinism.." he asked, "Can a way forward be found that stays true to Darwinism, puts aside worries about progress, and yet satisfies the believer?" That seemed to be the aim of the book - to maintain that there is such a way. Then comes the hard part. From page 311 till the end of the book at page 336, where Ruse concluded without explicating what "natural theology" really is - or at least, his version of it. He had taken a long and convoluted path only to reveal at the end that he was looking at natural life as art. Ruse, however, might be a little confused as to who the artist might be. He quoted C E Raven "Here is beauty -whatever the philosophers and art critics who have never looked at a moth may say - beauty that rejoices and humbles, beauty remote from all that is meant by words like random or purposeless, utilitarian or materialistic, beauty in its impact and effects akin to the authentic encounter with God" and ended his book saying "I have nothing more to add." The God who created the universe in Genesis did not do so in the Darwinian style. If the God he alluded to in his adoption of Raven's words is not the Christian God, then who was his God? Ruse left us guessing, and one might well conclude that he had fallen between two stools.

The author states (p.330) regarding "Darwinism--adaptation brought about by natural selection": "Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with it. The Darwinian revolution is over, and Darwin won."

He goes on to say that any satisfactory response must hence be on Darwinian terms, "adaptation, selection, blind variation..." The last of these, also known as random mutation, is of course how according to Darwin live organisms obtain the form that allows them to survive. As I tried in other reviews here (and am dealing with fully in my own book), I am presently again trying to convey that this focus on the organism's form stems from a misguided analogy between humanly produced functional artifacts and the functionality of organisms. It was argued in defense of intention in the organism's form that just as man-made artifacts are in their functions produced intentionally by an intelligent designer, so must organisms in their functions be the intentional product of intelligence.

And the dispute is well known to be about whether or not organisms, too, were formed intentionally, by way of a goal-directed process.

The mistake is that the goal-directedness or its absence is looked for in the wrong area. While there may be difficulties in showing whether organismic forms came about by plan or by accident, there is no difficulty at all in seeing instead that it is the organism's activities that are indeed goal-directed. For this evidence of preponderant goal-directedness in the living--their aim of self-preservation--which stares us straight in the face, there appears to be a complete blind spot. On recognizing this, the consequence is that Darwinism, contending the same aimlessness in organisms as in other natural events, is false. Yet Darwin is doggedly followed in science and praised to high heaven, with the author of the now reviewed book calling him a genius (p.109). Let me accordingly comment briefly on how original is Darwin's thinking.

Inasmuch as natural selection is in essence the environment's influence on the organism, the influence occurring in any case, the main point of Darwin is that organisms become adapted to the environment by accident rather than by aim. And it is obvious that for any chance of that to happen, supposing it possible at all, there must be enormous multitudes of variations as claimed, the thought requiring no new idea.

The subsequent thinking then has had to be preoccupied with seeking explanations of how the wrongly hypothesized chance adaptations occur.

This is a section from my book report I did on Ruse's book Darwin and Design. I think it would definitely help you understand what this book may be about. Definitely worth the cash if your just getting into Evolution and want some background and history on the subject. It's not really a book for advanced students or lovers of Evolution so don't even bother and don't write lame reviews bashing this book because it wasn't accelerated to your level. This is a great book and hoepfully it will spark your interest into Evolution like it did myself.
- Matt McKalips


Evolution vs. Creation is as old as religion itself. Though many might not have been true believers of evolution before Darwin went on his journey's to far off lands to study plants and animals, there was definitely a collective of curious minds in the world. Darwin's ideas of natural selection came as a shock and confused most people of the world. Even when he wrote his famed book The Origin of Species, the general population did not take the time of day to experiment with Darwin's ideas. In today's world most educated people accept that evolution has occurred or have become full believers in the theory.
Ruse's book starts out in Greece and where great philosophers came. From the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, where each philosopher was teacher of the later, Ruse describes each one briefly. Ruse spends his writing mostly on Plato where his theory on "purpose" is explained. Mainly "purpose" is the idea that causes precede effects. Plato also has theories called "moves" which his most famous one is termed "argument to design". "Argument to design" leans to the ways of Creation. It makes the world simplified because instead of wondering about what animals or life forms we have come from we just accept the fact of a natural designer. Aristotle, who was the student of Plato, thought differently than his great teacher on the ideas of "purpose" and "design". Aristotle speaks of senses but Ruse only describes one of them, and that one is the most important. Aristotle's forth sense known as "final cause" is a complete turn around of Plato's idea of "purpose". Final Cause is the theory that we have ideas or do things with our own ends in view. To simplify this it's like building blocks are made to make a building before we even know what a building is.
Other theories in the book come from other great philosophers like David Hume, Paley and Kant. The latter two still thought there was more to Aristotle's theory of "Final Cause" despite Hume being totally in agreement with the Greek philosopher. Paley and Kant argue to others that a machine has a machine maker. Their famous example is a watch, the watch is such an intricate machine, such as our bodies, and yet a watchmaker makes the watch, so in theory a body maker has made our bodies. Kant wasn't totally denying organic evolution, he even wrote about the gradual relative coincidence between smaller plant life such as lichens and mosses. Like I stated earlier, most educated people accept evolution in one form or another and this is true even in such Philosophers and scientist as Hume, Kant and Paley.
One main theme throughout Ruse's book is Natural Theology, or the attempt to combine nature with divinity. There are sections in each chapter where Ruse incorporates this idea with theories from Darwin and other evolutionists. Ruse's theology of nature is somewhat a fresh and innovative look at the subject of Evolution, as opposed to the simple applications that there is a predominant order in species as Darwin wrote of in the mid 1850's. In the chapter titled Natural Theology Evolves, Ruse goes more in depth on this subject and brings examples of Anglican and other religious beliefs into the picture and how Natural Theology equates to even Religion. Even at the time that the Origin of Species was being scrutinized even religious thinkers became weary of the knowledge of the bible.
In the final chapter "Turning Back the Clock" Ruse writes about the latest theory of "Intellectual Design" presented by Michael Behe. Behe's description of this theory is that each life form is "a single system composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (Behe). His most easily used example is that of a mouse trap in which there are 5 parts of the device and if you take one away the device will not serve its purpose effectively. For example, if you take away the spring that is connected to the hammer on a mouse trap there will be nothing to snap forward when the lever is activated. Behe, being the biologist he is, took this theory into the context of cells and explained that even bacteria uses a rotary motor called a flagellum to help the bacteria move around and multiply.
This book is a . Maybe not the book itself, but the general ideas and theories presented must be taught to a class that is called Science and Religion. In a way Ruse writes about both worlds of science and religion in this book without bashing religion as much as you think a Darwinian would do. The book also acts as a history lesson to the world of philosophy by going back to Socrates and even coming to present with Christian theologians. Another great point of Darwin and Design is that even though the name of the book says Darwin, Ruse also goes into detail about others such as Kant and Paley, which should also be taught when speaking of Evolution.
I learned very much about this book. Whether it involves reality I have no idea. This book served more to me as a history lesson than presenting me with new pioneering ideas on Evolution. The section on Behe gave me tremendous insight to how such simple things as a mouse trap are incorporated into such high detailed models as cell structures and high probability numbers.

This is a well written book, and it has plenty of fascinating material. Ruse begins with a discussion of what "purpose" is. That means understanding that causes precede effects. And it means understanding that objects can have purposes: a watch can have a purpose, namely to tell time. A bread knife can have a purpose, namely to cut bread. And so on.

But what is the purpose of, um, the planet Jupiter? Or of Niagara Falls? We soon see that inanimate objects can be purposeless. And when we look at animate objects, such as eyes or entire creatures, we see that these can fail to have any overall purpose in a Darwinian world.

Ruse then gets to the issue of complexity. Does apparent complexity of some entities show that they have purposes? No. And he shows how Hume argued that apparent complexity in the world may be deceptive.

I wish that Ruse had spent some time on the following argument against design: who designed god? If god didn't need to be designed, why did the observed universe need to be designed? If god needed a designer, was that designer bigger, tougher, and more complex than god or weaker and simpler? And who designed the designer that designed god? But Ruse spares us what I think is actually a good set of questions here.

Ruse then discusses Darwinian evolution and adaptation. And we see some interesting examples. There's a fine discussion of male-to-female ratios at birth and the connection to survival and reproduction. "High ranking" females of some species have more male offspring (consistent with the idea that such offspring will do well in competing for mates) while "low ranking" females have more female offspring (consistent with the idea that almost all females will reproduce).

We also get to read about behavior that seems only partially adaptive, such as the breeding of dunnocks, as well as the tomography of some square-shaped bacteria in saline pools in the Sinai.

Those of us who read books about evolution often see design used as a metaphor. Ruse discusses this. It isn't so much that we're using the language of Design. That's fine if such language is appropriate. But is it? And in some cases, it certainly makes sense.

The book concludes with a chapter on "Intelligent Design." Ruse politely demolishes some of the arguments made by some of the modern proponents of this outdated idea. And he also talks about Dawkins, who claims that Darwinism is a major challenge to religious belief. Is Dawkins right? Well, yes, he is. It is indeed a challenge to religious belief. And Ruse makes the point that one can argue in favor of religious belief anyway, but not by arbitrarily dismissing either Darwin or Dawkins.

I enjoyed reading this book, and I recommend it.

I'd like to know what's going on at Harvard University Press . . . have they launched a series of high school texts without telling anyone? A friend of mine suggested that we read this book and I was shocked by how mediocre it is.

Readers who are seeking a clear, documented and science-focused discussion of the debate about Darwinism versus design should order Simon Conway Morris' LIFE'S SOLUTION (published by Cambridge University Press, incidently). His notion of convergence is basically a proxy for the design argument without the metaphysical baggage. I don't know if physicists are more or less religious than the general population, but at least physicists are aware of how uncannily orderly the universe is, however they believe it came about. Conway Morris brings this pespective to biology, which has been hi-jacked long since by the anti-teleologist gang of Darwinian popularizers. Ruse is one of them, albeit in sheep's clothing.

The first two pages of Ruse's Introduction were so simple-minded and patronizing that I almost couldn't bear to read them, but I struggled on and was rewarded by an ascent to mediocrity in the rest of the Introduction. The crucial flaw in Ruse's book is that it is basically a history of philosophy and religion, and Ruse is apparently incapable of getting any of his material straight.

You may question how a nice man like Ruse succeeded in annoying me to this degree, but my concerns are more serious than the level at which Ruse has pitched his rhetoric: he doesn't understand his subject. For a guy to address the rational, fact-based vs. speculative/faith (or irrational) way of looking at the universe without once mentioning Spinoza is to commit malpractice: "Deus sive Natura" ("God, that is, nature" meaning that God is not distinguishable from nature) is the most devastating blow ever struck to the religious conception that observable design in nature is an implicit proof for the existence of a creator. And looking at the list of books he has either written or edited, Ruse has established a niche for himself as an expert on design and theology as it relates to evolution! A wondeful example of the power of the evolutionary strategy of mimicry . . . !

When Ruse does discuss the science, he repeatedly delivers himself of his real position by hiding behind that intellectual fraud and bully Dawkins. For example, Ruse's comment "The only possible response to Dawkins, is that, Darwin or not, you feel compelled to accept that our understanding of nature, of living things, is changed and illuminated and made complete by your acceptance of the existence and creative power and sustaining nature of God" (page 331) is pathetic blather-and both condescending and presumptuous since he is putting words in the mouth of his hypothetical religious person. However, the passage confirms what is evident throughout DARWIN AND DESIGN--that Ruse merely plays "good cop" to Dawkins' and Dennett's "bad cop"-while sharing with Dawkins an agenda of extreme intolerance to religious claims for the existence of any form of value or meaning. Pages 331 - 333 are unpersuasive to a degree that is simply embarrassing, and pages 334 - 336 sink to a level of bathos and obsequiousness that it is a rare experience to behold.

But back to Ruse . . . the last chapter, Chapter 15 "Turning Back the Clock" is the most interesting in the book, but it demonstrates that Ruse brought a knife to an intellectual gunfight. Ruse had already confirmed this for me-at the absolute latest-on page 208 when he writes, "The fairest conclusion, therefore, is that, with respect to the question of progress, people are very much divided." How can the author of a book called Darwin and Design: Does Evolution have a Purpose? avoid taking a position on the question of progress?

To return to the opening sections of Darwin and Design, Ruse's pastiche of Leo Strauss's distinction between Athens and Jerusalem (beginning page 11) bleaches out most of the content that made Strauss's essay famous . . . and that is being as kind to Ruse as possible. In his version, when he turns from Athens to Jerusalem, he ignores Judaism with the breezy comment "As we leave Athens for Jerusalem, we must move the clock forward, past the birth of Jesus and into the Christian era" (Page 19)! This is astounding, given that (a) Jerusalem had ceased to exist, having been sacked and razed by the army of Titus, in the era to which Ruse is referring-which vitiates the original logic of the Athens:Jerusalem metaphor, and (b) it ignores the fact that Judaism is the inalienable root of Christianity, and most relevant Christian ideas associated with his subject make their first appearance in Judaism.

Psalm 8 is the origin of the theme that the observable design and order of nature makes it clear that a divine and beneficent God created the universe. Strangely, Ruse postpones any mention of these obvious sources of the theological side of the design argument until page 306, when he quotes a phrase from Psalm 19--much less engages in any meaningful way with the key representatives of the tradition.

Ruse's discussion of Augustine is laughable-Augustine was indeed "much taken with the philosophy of Plato" (Page 20) but Augustine spoke/read not one word of Greek so Plato's influence on him was quite indirect, and as a former Gnostic Augustine was all too aware of the danger of creating radical distinctions between the physical world and the world of values.

Not a word from Ruse about that, but Hans Jonas, a student of Heidegger who wrote the great The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity realized that 19th century scientific innovation was not the real reason for the era's attack on the idea of order and design in the physical universe. Jonas was a student of Heidegger, and he wrote his thesis on the Gnostics, which became the book The Gnostic Religion. Jonas was intimately familiar with the implications of Dawin on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and understood their impact on Heidegger. After having studied the Gnostics he asked this fundamental question:


Let us stop to ask what has here happened to the old idea of the cosmos as a divinely order whole. Certainly nothing remotely comparable to modern physical science was involved in the catastrophic devaluation and spiritual denudation of the universe. We need only observe that this universe became thoroughly demonized in the Gnostic period . . . . If not science and technology, what caused, for the human groups involved, the collapse of the cosmos piety of classical civilization, on which so much of the ethics was built?

His answer was a radical alienation that developed in late antiquity between the physical world and the world of values. Christianity, exemplified by Origen and Augustine, insisted on the synthesis between the physical world and the realm of values. This is the real story which should have been told in Ruse's first chapters.

For example, his quotations from Lucretius and Hume make a point very different than the one he is trying to make. The issue about chaos or design is ancient (which is obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with the Western tradition), and hasn't really changed much; partisans of both sides have risen in almost every generation. The fact that Hume sounds Darwinian only shows that Darwin fit a metaphysical template over a set of physical facts to make a heuristic point every bit as speculative as any Church dogma.

In any case, a force just as powerful as the skepticism of Hume and Spinoza in the attack on design arose from the ethical critique of Voltaire, and it is the moral critique that is probably the more influential one. Ruse waits until his last chapter to address this point, which is revealing because Darwin's biography seems to indicate that the ethical argument was decisive on his views about the existence of a divine creator. Ruse also acknowledges at the end of his book that Dawkins has been deeply influenced by the ethical issue as well. Why does Ruse park the discussion of such an influential issue at the back of his book?

The moral or ethical critique is the issue about how a God powerful enough to create the universe could permit the unspeakable suffering evident everywhere. The publication of Candide in 1759 was a devastating indictment of design on these ethical grounds.

Indeed, the death of Darwin's daughter--ie his personal reaction to the problem of inexplicable suffering-seems to have been a major factor in Darwin's personal loss of religious faith. He also comments in his writings (I can't remember where) in relation to a particularly horrible parasitic relationship between host and parasite, that he couldn't imagine how anyone could be aware of it and believe in a good creator God.

These are theological views, not scientific views. As such, they are answerable with theological responses. Darwinists ignore the doctrine of the Fall in their theological speculations. The doctrine of the Fall teaches that Satan corrupted creation and triggered the introduction of diseases, the redefinition of the relations between animals into the relationship of predator and prey, and other calamities which distorted the original natural order of the physical world. Paul famously describes the effects of Satan's intervention in the natural world in his letter to the Romans:

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. (Chapter 8)

Of course, this is theology, but so are Darwin's (and Dawkins's) sweeping statements, and if Darwin and Dawkins were moved to speculate about God's motives, why should they ignore a 3,000 year old tradition that declares that the natural world is strongly influenced by the adversary of God?

But the metaphysical assertions of Darwinism are nothing new, they are merely the other side of an ancient tradition. Nor is it news that every living being who is born must die. What was innovative was Darwin's decision to focus on death and the killing process as the efficient causes of the world we see around us, indeed the secret mechanism for the development of living beings.

Jonas makes interesting points in his Phenomenon of Life about how Darwinism in effect makes death and killing the creative force itself, and by asserting that adaptations were mutations, Darwinism destroyed any sense of an "essence of being" in its traditional, noble meaning. As Darwin wrote, "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 (Page 649)", and this vision is the heart of the challenge posed by Darwinism to traditional ethics.

Darwin's belief in death and killing as the underlying creative force in the natural world is the lodestar of Darwinism; everything else about the theory has changed and changed again since the publication of The Origin of Species, but the idea that evolution occurs as a result of adaptation through natural selection, with the elimination of beings with less-efficient adaptations, remains the key idea. I'm not sure whether science has confirmed that Darwin's Malthusian logic is true for the animal world (it turned out not to be true with respect to humans), but in any event Darwin's emphasis on death rather than on life is the most enduring aspect of his Weltanshaung:

All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply. (Page 106)

What is particularly sinister is the solace Darwin offers his reader in the last sentence. This is not science, this is a dark theology.

Why did I react at such length to a mediocrity like Ruse? Because Ruse is a committed partisan and popularizer of misleading ideas-and by this I don't refer to scientific ideas-that have already caused humanity much sorrow. He acknowledges that Darwinism is a theology of death and then basically advises his reader to accept it as fact and move on. Like the follower and the sheep that he is, Ruse heads right down the well-trodden path to disaster pioneered by his intellectual betters. His final comment is a perfect expression of his limitations and poor judgment:

"This is what makes it all meaningful to the believer. Not proof, but simply flooding, overwhelming experience that could not be denied. In Raven's words . . . 'Here is beauty-whatever the philosophies and art critics who have never looked at a moth may say-beauty that rejoices and humbles, beauty remote from all that is meant by words like random or purposelessness, utilitarian or materialistic, beauty in its impact and effects akin to the authentic encounter with God.' I have nothing more to add. (Page 336)"

Indeed not--Nietzsche concluded that transcendent values did not exist, and that all existing religions and systems of meaning were an illusion. Where did he look to find meaning? He wrote in The Birth of Tragedy (I think): "The world can only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon"--precisely the position arrived at by the stumblebum Ruse as he reflects on what meaning is left to him by Darwin's theology of death.