A long time ago, I found myself engaged in an argument with a creationist. I suppose I could have avoided the thing, but he was being very loud as he lectured the girl he was with about how evolution was “flawed.” Now, I typically just sit back and enjoy the ride on these sorts of discussions, waiting for particularly golden nuggets of entertaining ignorance to come forth. However, the gentleman in question kept asserting “facts” about evolutionary biology that were completely divorced from anybody’s understanding of the subject that I went against my better nature and informed him of his errors.

Charles Darwin

Mind you, I had no question of changing this gentleman’s mind. It’s just that if he was going to continue not accepting the theory of evolution, I wanted him to at least know what it was he wasn’t accepting. Suffice to say, the conversation did not keep pace with my noble intentions.

As such arguments inevitably do, we became particularly heated over the subject of abiogenesis (that is, the initial development of life on earth). He insisted that life was specifically created and directed by the hand of a deity. I attempted to persuade him that the chemical properties of the much younger earth were particularly suited for the development of amino acids and primitive cellular structures.

At this point he said (with quite a smug look on his face) that, “Not even Darwin could explain how life could arise from non-life!”

I responded simply by stating that Darwin’s opinions on the subject was irrelevant in light of the century and a half of work on the subject since he wrote his books. And in any case, I’d never read any of his work on the subject. (Although I pointed out that I was generally aware of what his work was.)

This appeared to flabbergast the gentleman. “How can you believe in evolution if you’ve never read Darwin?!”

I attempted to explain to him that I don’t “believe in evolution.” Rather, I accept that all of the evidence uncovered to date supports the theory of evolution. Indeed, I pointed out that the evidence that life evolved is actually overwhelming enough to consider it a simple matter of fact, although the precise mechanisms of evolution were still being determined.

“Ah-ha! So you don’t believe in evolution!”

I sighed, and decided to work my way out of the conversation, because it clearly wasn’t going anywhere. Accepting a scientific theory is, after all, not a question of belief–it’s a question of whether facts line up with hypotheses. Belief has always been, in my mind, something that one accepts without evidence. I try not to have too many of those, and will hopefully keep doing not having them in the future. Knock on wood.

At any rate, in thinking about this conversation later, one thing that keeps coming to mind was the question the gentleman asked:

“How can you believe in evolution if you’ve never read Darwin?!”

It seems like an absurd question on the face of it. I mean, I accept the theory of gravitation without having read Newton. I accept the theory of relativity without having read Einstein. I’m pretty sure that DNA is shaped in a double helix, and I’ve never read Watson and Crick’s seminal paper on the subject. Why should evolution be different?

The funny thing about this is that the person I talked to was hardly alone in the emphasis on “Darwinism” rather then evolution. Around the web and in libraries are thousands of attacks on “Darwinism.” Darwin is frequently quoted in anti-evolution literature, and attacks on evolutionary science focus enormously on Darwin’s work–ignoring the decades and scientists who came later.

In trying to come to grips with why this is, I realized that evidence of evolution poses a unique problem for Christianity. At least, Christianity in most of its modern variants that accept the doctrines of Original Sin and Salvation through Grace. This is primarily because in order for a Christian to accept evolution, he or she has to consider that the book of Genesis, at least for the first few chapters, is myth or allegory. Accepting evolution means rejecting the Garden of Eden, the story of Adam and Eve, and most importantly, rejecting the story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and subsequently being expelled from Eden. The problem is that this story provides the basis for one of the centerpieces of traditional Christian theology: Original Sin. In traditional Christianity, Adam and Eve’s disobedience in eating the fruit was Original Sin, which was then passed on to their descendants, namely us.

Original Sin, according to theologians such as Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and many others, prevents human beings from achieving salvation on their own. It so corrupts a person that they cannot be virtuous at all–virtue only comes through the intervention of grace. (The most popular scriptural support for this proposition is Romans 5:12-21, which ties Original Sin and the Adam and Eve story together). It was not until Jesus Christ, who was without Original Sin, came into this world and was crucified that Original Sin could be washed away by the grace of God, and those who receive grace are no longer damned. (This is usually accomplished through Baptism.) Without Original Sin, the doctrine of salvation through grace is on much murkier ground. After all, if people are not hopelessly corrupted through Original Sin, then there is no need for salvation by grace–people can be either damned or not based on their own merit. And if people can be damned or saved on their own merit, then it cannot be said that Christ died as a sacrifice to take upon himself the sins of those who accept him.

Put simply, if a Christian interprets the Bible such that he accepts the doctrines of Original Sin and of Salvation by Grace (and most Christian sects do), then that Christian has to accept the literal truth of Genesis. To do otherwise means to develop an entirely new theology.

And this, I suspect, is why opponents of evolution focus on Darwin so much: because to focus on one man, and to attribute an entire branch of science to that one man, rather than the faceless processes of peer review and experimentation, makes it that much easier to resist the ideas of evolution and all of the consequences of those ideas.

After all, to paraphrase Bruce Wayne, as a man, Darwin is flesh and blood. He can be ignored, he can be attacked. He can be accused of fallibility and his inconsistencies can be exploited. By tying the idea of evolution to Darwin the man, evolution’s opponents are able to distract people from the fact that research into evolution is ongoing and did not stop with Darwin. It’s a rhetorical device being used to undermine evolution by divorcing it from science.

While it may be a trick and a rhetorical device, though, but there’s no denying that it’s effective. If you don’t believe me, just hop on to Google and search for “darwin and the eye”. Just a brief skim through shows how powerful opponents of evolution have been in using Darwin’s inability to explain the evolution of the eye to attack evolution. (Ironically, they are able to do so even though Darwin pointed out that his inability to explain it did not undermine evolution).

The best way to undermine this rhetorical trick is simply to reject “Darwinism” and evolution as synonyms, as they are not. Advocates of evolution need to point out the mountains of scientific research into evolution post-Darwin (particularly research into genetics), and show that the science of evolution does not start and stop with one man. That means enough with the Darwin fish and all of the other cutesy things that elevate Darwin above the scientific process.

Don’t get me wrong–Darwin was a genius, there’s no doubt about that. He was a man of incredible insight and integrity, and partisans of science rightly honor him. But in the battle of evolutionary rhetoric, it needs to be made clear who Darwin was: the innovative pioneer of a fast-growing branch of science. Not the end-all be-all of our knowledge of the evolutionary process.