Cambridge Companion 8 - Brooke

Cambridge Companion to Darwin (2003)

  • Neste capítulo Brooke discutirá a relação de Darwin e do Darwinismo com a religião cristã de modo compreensivo e sem maniqueísmo;
  • Brooke afirma que durante a época que Darwin proferiu suas ideias o literalismo bíblico já não estava em voga nos círculos mais cultos, no entanto os leigos religiosos ainda viam as ideias darwinistas como um ataque. O mecanismo de aumento de complexidade darwinista ia diretamente contra a cosmologia da origem humana bíblica. Adão tinha sido expulso do paraíso por sua imperfeição, enquanto que a raça humana havia se tornado mais complexa e sofisticada;
  • O autor diz que outras perguntas podem ser feitas:
    • Se os humanos compartilham o mesmo ancestral com todos os outros seres vivos, o que significa ser "feito a imagem de Deus"?
    • A alma aparece durante o processo evolutivo?
    • Se somos indistinguíveis de animais, não deveríamos nos comportar da mesma forma?
  • Brooke diz que Darwin não tinha intenção de destituir toda a moralidade no Descent of Man, mas sim mostrar que ela poderia surgir de maneira natural nos seres vivos;
  • Darwin desafiou o establishment intelectual inglês, que descrevia a natura através de argumento de Design, paradigma vigente na prática científica da época. Ainda segundo Brooke, Hodge (1874) não acusou Darwin e suas ideias de serem ateias, mas sim a derrocada do design como uma prerrogativa de ateísmo;
  • A explicação por meio de uma "árvore da vida" também desafiava o design, pois mostra que somos resultado de um processo não teleológico e também mostra os muitos processos arbitrários que permitem ou não o aparecimento e desenvolvimento de uma nova espécie, embora eu acredite que esse tipo de raciocínio ecológico ainda não fosse utilizado na época;
  • Brooke disseca o estereótipo do conflito entre Darwin e o cristianismo, mostrando os subtons que realmente existiram ele diz "Many did see opposition between evolution and creation; but it was also possible to see evolution as God's method of creation";
  • Brooke comenta o que Darwin aprendeu com a teologia natural, trazendo a tona Paley e Malthus. Notáveis cristãos com ideias cristãs que influenciaram Darwin durante o desenvolvimento da teoria da seleção natural. Brooke elabora:
    • "Opinions differ on the extent of Darwin’s debt to natural theology because two contrasting views have emerged concerning his intellectual formation. In the first he is a peculiarly English reformer of the language of design that he had encountered in Paley. In the second he is a Romantic naturalist, excited by the travels of Alexander von Humboldt, eager to experience the flora and fauna of exotic landscapes [...] On neither view was nature bereft of religious meaning."
    • "If the laws of nature were of divine origin, one might expect the improvement of organic forms to reach such levels of perfection that a continuous action of natural selection would cease. If environmental changes subsequently produced new pressures, then (and only then) would natural selection cut in again. It has been argued that such a constraint on the continuous action of natural selection was not lifted until Darwin began to think in terms of relative rather than absolute or perfect adaptation. Darwin admitted that other legacies from natural theology had also shaped his thinking. In his Descent of Man there was a frank confession: ‘I had not formerly sufficiently considered the existence of many structures’ which are ‘neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work’. What reason did he give for this oversight? ‘I was not able to annul the influence of my former belief, then widely prevalent, that each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacitly assuming that every detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though unrecognised, service.’ Darwin corrects his former self, and we may recognise both Darwins in current evolutionary debates."
  • Em 1842, durante a formação da teoria da SN, Darwin justificava as mortes e extinções decorrentes da luta como uma justificativa para que apenas os animais superiores pudessem surgir. Brooke diz que essas são dicas de uma teodiceia, um forma de explicar as imperfeições do mundo criado por um ser perfeito;
  • Brooke critica a ideia que temos hoje da religiosidade de Darwin. Para ele a progressão linear entre o cristão fervoroso do Beagle até o agnosticismo do final da vida de Darwin passa uma concepção de secularização e de um processo inevitável. No entanto o próprio Darwin comenta sobre flutuações de crença em sua autobiografia;
  • O autor passa a explorar as influências do agnosticismo de Darwin:
    • As culturais poderiam ser facilmente identificadas em Comte e Hume; 
    • No Beagle ele descobriu que a ideia de Deus não era universal conforme estudava os povos da América do Sul;
    • Existem também as tragédias pessoais que o abalaram muito emocionalmente;
    • A percepção de que seus amigos descrentes viviam vidas perfeitamente morais mesmo sem serem cristãos;
  • Para o autor é impossível separar a crescente descrença de Darwin de sua ciência. Brooke diz que as conexões são muitas: "Extending the domain of natural law did make miracles more incredible. The extent of human suffering threatened belief in a beneficent God but was consonant with his theory of natural selection. Randomness in the production of variation was difficult to square with divine control". Mesmo Emma, sua esposa, temia que o tipo de raciocíno necessário para a mente científica encorajasse a descrença nos assuntos relacionados a fé.
  • Brooke conclui sobre este ponto:
    • "What of Darwin’s public utterances? It has become increasingly clear how carefully they must be read. From his notebooks we know that he had to calculate what he should not say. It was also expedient to keep what he said about religion to a minimum. ‘Many years ago’, he reminisced, ‘I was strongly advised by a friend never to introduce anything about religion in my works, if I wished to advance science in England.’ There may have been expediency, too, in protecting himself from censure. But it is a complex matter because he also shared the belief that it was ungentlemanly to disturb the faith of others. This means there can be a greater ambiguity in his public remarks on religion than in private. Here is Darwin confiding to Joseph Hooker in March 1863: ‘I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant ‘appeared’ by some wholly unknown process.’ Because he regretted having used biblical language it does not follow that he was admitting to atheism. It is even possible he was truckling to Hooker! But it is indisputable that he lost a specifically Christian faith. He could write that science itself had ‘nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence’. But that very caution, just as Emma had feared, took its toll: ‘For myself I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation.’ It has been suggested that Darwin’s evidentialist view of Christianity goes back to another work of Paley, his Evidences of Christianity. If that is correct there is a subtle irony. The Anglican Church itself had taught him to test the rationality of faith through the study of evidence – a lesson that he so took to heart that it cost him the beliefs he had earlier espoused."
  • Brooke passa a analisar as respostas recebidas por Darwin. Ele diz que, para Turner, o debate é um sintoma de uma profunda mudança social, na qual uma geração antiga de cientistas amadores (como os naturalistas cléricos) estão sendo substituídos por cientistas profissionais, enfatizando suas novas visões de mundo;
  • Brooke afirma com muita sensatez: "It is a mistake to assume that the scientific community was united behind Darwin, just as it would be a mistake to imagine that all Christian theologians lined up against him" e "Just as the conflict thesis ignores many instances of harmony between science and religion, the revisionist response tends to minimise the dissonance". Huxley via as ciências como extra-cristãs, não anti-cristãs, além de acreditar que o design ainda era possível no estado primordial do universo. Ainda sobre este assunto, ele diz:
    • "Because religious sensibilities depended on location as well as tradition, it is impossible to generalise about Christian responses. Even within the same Christian denominations there was diversity. Whereas the Anglican bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, thought he could demolish Darwin’s theory on scientific and philosophical grounds, another Anglican divine, Frederick Temple, was receptive to the new science as early as 1860. Whereas in Belfast a traditional Calvinism was used to refute the precepts of evolution, at Calvinist Princeton, under the leadership of James McCosh, biological evolution was accepted. One reason for the contrast was the legacy in Belfast of John Tyndall’s 1874 address as President of the British Association. His aggressive remarks that we noted earlier encouraged the view that Darwinism, atheism and materialism went hand in hand. To add to the diversity there were prominent scientists who doubted whether the development of the human mind could be reduced to the action of natural selection. Darwin’s mentor Charles Lyell is one example: a convert to evolutionary theory who nevertheless held back when it came to the uniqueness of the human mind. Darwin’s co-founder of the theory of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, is another.Wallace had rejected an evangelical Christianity early in life but later became enthralled by a spiritualist philosophy, even seeking to test it experimentally. To Darwin’s regret, Wallace insisted that certain attributes of the human mind, notably its aesthetic, musical and mathematical powers, defied explanation by natural selection."
  • O autor ainda afirma que a queda do design frente ao darwinismo não foi um baque tão grande para o cristianismo como alguns propõem, uma vez que haviam perspectivas cuja teologia dava pouca importância ao argumento do design. Ele afirma também que a crise de fé pela qual a Inglaterra passava tinha outras raízes, entre elas as críticas iluministas, as inconsistências presentes entre as diversas denominações cristãs ,os novos métodos de criticismo bíblico e a secularização estimulada pela revolução industrial;

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