A Review of David Sloane Wilson’s  Darwin’s Cathedral
 
It’s pretty clear to me that from a  religious person, even a Christian, should be grateful for this book. It is, fundamentally, an attempt to defend religious faith against  one of its traditional enemies, the evolutionary biologists, and to do so using their own vocabulary and basic assumptions. It is a noble effort.

The difficulty remains though, that the nature of God makes it hard to talk about  him in another than God language. God lies on the other side of a chasm, emotionally, logically and linguistically. You only get across by a leap of faith. Attempts to  build bridges starting from psychology, or mythology, or biology never quite work, though they must continually be attempted.

So watching Wilson work is like watching a person trying to build a house with a set of tools designed for gardening instead of carpentry. When he does use the right tool, he insists on picking up by the wrong end. You wish you could build your own house using the tools the right way, but you are too clumsy with them so you have to cheerlead from the sidelines, at same time your heart is breaking for him.  

But his overall sympathetic tone finally emerges full-force on p. 217. There he cites some of the gibes made at religion who preach forgiveness yet are judgmental, who preach the golden rule and wage war, who preach forgiveness and punish criminals. He points out that such cheap jibes ignore context and says  says, “One form of hell for me would be to be locked for eternity in a room full of people who make these observations again and again as if for the first time.

Let me list several other features of the book I found attractive:

First, He diligently tries to  clarify all kinds of technical arguments within the field of evolutionary biology, so that the book winds up being a kind of text book and a polemic at the same time.  We learn about Durkheim, of whom I had only heard vaguely, and about Stark and Evans-Pritchard, about whom I probably should have heard, since their work is the currency in many people’s thinking about religion. He favors something called multi-level selection theory over competing systems such as rational choice. I was glad to know about both, though I wound up understanding the competing systems better than I did the method he defends, perhaps because he simplifies the competition but keeps seeing complexity in his own method, which he understands it better. In the same way, I might be clearer about Islam,  than I can about Christianity because I see subtleties in it that I don’t see in the competing system.


Second, given the fact that he is working within a framework strange to most of us, he writes engagingly. He tries to provide lively examples—describing the bees on page 33 for example comparing  the mind with an immune system on page. 31. And he adopts a cheerful tone  even when he puts down those to whom he disagrees, as on page 105 where he says, “Those who regard religious belief as senseless superstition may need to revise their own beliefs.”

Third, he never tries to sell evolutionary biology as something that explains everything. He takes a more modest view of his own methods than many Christians do of theirs, and so from that perspective could be said to demonstrate “Christian values.”  But the downside of not explaining everything is that he necessarily leaves a lot of logical gaps that could be exploited by anyone inclined to reject his argument. For example, he explains in great detail how Calvin’s Geneva proved adaptable, but casually mentions that Zwingle’s Zurich just down the road “failed miserably.” So obviously faith values don’t always provide survival value, and if they don’t, where does that leave his argument?

The compelling question, though, for most Christian readers will still remain: How relevant is the “utility” of religion?  Are people really going to be drawn  to faith because it helps groups succeed? If faith is useful to survival, then how is it different from deoderant or automobiles or other things that enhance adaptability. Isn’t faith as analyzed by Wilson is what Kirkegaard called “Christendom”—the smug and complacent bourgeois faith of 19th century Denmark, to which Kierkegaard opposed what the called inwardness, the leap of faith costing everything, what Eliot called the “awful daring of a moment’s surrender.” Kierkegaaard’s image, developed at length in Fear and Trembling,  was Abraham journeying to Moria with his son.    

People who go to church can be shown to have more friends, more happiness, and a better sex lives. But does any really go to church for those reasons? If they are not inclined to go to church, they will simply dispute the evidence that leads to those conclusions and continue to believe that church-goers are muddled and benighted.

Besides, Where does Christ say that the kingdom of God is adaptive? What he does say is that those who lose their lives for my sake  will save them.  Where does John say that faith is adaptive? What he does say is that Christ so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son.  Where does St. Paul say that faith is adaptive? What he does say is that Nothing can separate us from the love of God, neither depths nor heights, or principalities, nor powers. That language, and not the language of evolutionary biology is ultimately what is going to draw people into relationship with Christ in God if they are inclined to be drawn. And it is a great mystery why some are do inclined and some not.

Certainly I came to faith not to cut a better deal for myself but because I was at the end of  my rope.  I felt a sense of sin and a need to repent. The church offered not utility but forgiveness, not survival but truth.  In my heart I still think that the need to repent is still the essential ingredient of active faith, perhaps not the only path but path to take you the deepest way. .

But then my case is probably not the typical one. In the end, whatever will draw people closer to God is good, and this book is probably doing God’s work.