[English] Merrell Davis: Darwin and Fundamentalism, translated by Zhang Zengyi, Peking University Press, March 2005
I had read this book once before, but apparently I didn’t take any notes. Today I reread it at great speed.
A couple of random remarks, by the way: this “Postmodern Confrontation Series” is, in terms of content, all quite good, but… alas, such a thin little book, with only 70,000 characters, already takes 5.375 sheets, and still costs 12.8 yuan! Also, Mr. Jin Wulun’s general preface to the series and Mr. Wang Zhihe’s Chinese translation preface are of course very good, and generally speaking they are not especially long in terms of word count, but when placed in such a small book… the preface, the translator’s introduction, and the preface by the translator of this book together already amount to almost half the book…
Zhang Zengyi: Introduction:
Pages 7~8
The common features of creationism are that it does not accept evolution and advocates and endorses supernatural forces or direct creation by God. Old-earth creationism accepts the ideas of an ancient earth in modern science as well as the Big Bang cosmology, and does not favor a literal reading of the Bible. Young-earth creationists, by contrast, reject the modern scientific idea of an ancient earth, insist on a strict literal interpretation of the Bible, and believe that the entire universe was created by God in six days (twenty-four hours each) about 6,000–10,000 years ago, attempting to use Noah’s Flood (or the universal flood) to explain geological phenomena and the fossil record. Progressive creationists accept most of the achievements of modern science and the picture of the world they reveal, acknowledging that most phenomena in nature obey natural laws. But when it comes to life on earth, they believe that at every crucial point in the development of terrestrial life there was intervention by supernatural forces or by God; creation was not completed by God within six days, but was a continuous historical process. Intelligent design creationists represent a new form of creationism that has emerged since the 1990s. Many of these creationists not only hold master’s or doctoral degrees from regular or prestigious universities, but also occupy important positions in non-church universities or research institutions. They believe that a supernatural force or God controls changes in nature by setting certain goals and purposes. They advocate developing a “theistic science.”
Among these four types of creationists, young-earth creationists are the most theologically conservative, and their opposition to evolution is also the most resolute and vehement. They insist that the Bible’s literal interpretation is absolutely correct, oppose any form of liberal theology and secularism, and therefore are also called Christian fundamentalists. They are the backbone of the anti-evolution movement in twentieth-century America.
Pages 9~10
Christian fundamentalism’s shift from defending its own religious beliefs to opposing evolution was caused by a number of reasons. First, during this period public education in the United States, especially secondary education, developed rapidly, causing more people to care about the contents of secondary-school textbooks. According to statistics, in 1890 there were about 360,000 secondary-school students in the United States; by 1910 the number had risen to over 1.1 million, and by 1920 it increased again to 2.5 million. This was the first time in American history that many children from the lower-middle and lower social strata were able to go to school. Second, the emergence of German militarism and the severe disasters brought by the First World War led some conservative Christians to mistakenly regard them as the results of evolution, and to attribute the loss of Protestant ethical morality and society’s tolerance of such behavior to the inevitable consequences of accepting evolution. Third, the atmosphere of “conflict” and “war” fostered by John Draper’s History of the Conflict between Science and Religion (1876) and Andrew White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) made the American public, especially conservative Christians, believe that science, and evolution in particular, was the enemy of religious faith; this view took deep root in the minds of ordinary Americans in the 1920s. Fourth, the debates within the scientific community surrounding Darwinian evolution at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, especially skepticism about natural selection, pushed evolution into a low ebb in the United States, making it easier for creationists to target it for attack.
Pages 25~26
In 1999, the Kansas State Textbook Committee decided to prohibit state public middle-school textbooks from including content on “macroevolution” (evolution between different species), the Big Bang cosmology, and the age of the earth. Only under strong pressure from scientific professional groups, the news media, and public opinion was it forced to rescind the above decision.
> In 2001, anti-evolution proposals were received by the House of Representatives in seven states. Thus, after nearly a century, the controversy between creationism and evolution has still not ended.
Page 26
Davis’s Darwin and Fundamentalism reflects on the trajectory and theoretical basis of this controversy from a postmodern perspective, helping people understand the complexity and essence of the dispute. However, in the book, the scientists who defend evolution are called “scientific fundamentalists,” a claim that is debatable.////——The discussions and reflections in the rest of the main text are too cursory; although there are many interesting points, most of them are basically things I already knew, so there are not many notes from the main text. The phrase “scientific fundamentalists” is very interesting, but the author does not develop it, and I will take up this line of thought—of course, by no means are all supporters of Darwinism “scientific fundamentalists,” just as not all anti-Darwinists are Christian fundamentalists; but there is indeed a group of scientists whose characteristics are quite like those of “fundamentalism,” and describing them with this term may perhaps be more fitting than speaking vaguely of “scientismists.”
Main text, page 97
Although scientists have done their utmost to describe the counterattack of the fundamentalists as “the restoration of the Inquisition,” the Roman Pope—in fact, the Roman Popes—have repeatedly clarified that the Catholic position is by no means like this. Before modern Christian fundamentalism had even arisen, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Humani Generis in 1950. It “holds that ‘evolutionism’ is a serious hypothesis, deserving further in-depth study, exploration, and reflection, just like the opposite hypothesis.” The encyclical goes on to say: “For these reasons, the Church’s teaching authority has not forbidden… research and discussion of evolution… nor has it replaced the relevant doctrine of evolution, as long as the object of research and discussion is limited to the origin of the material basis of human bodily life. However, this issue must be resolved in such a way—that is, the reasons supporting these two viewpoints, namely the reasons supporting evolution and those not supporting evolution, must all receive serious, proper, and balanced consideration and judgment.” In 1996, the current Pope John Paul II went even further in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He said: “…Faith alone leads us to recognize that the theory of evolution is more than just a hypothesis… the results of independently conducted research show a convergent trend, and this convergence is neither deliberately sought nor artificially fabricated; this fact itself is powerful evidence in support of evolution.”////——The greatest resistance to evolution does not come from Catholicism, but precisely from the United States, which can be said to be the most developed and most liberal country; this is well worth pondering.
January 23, 2007, 7:12 p.m.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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