Defeating Darwin – My First Real Decision

Defeating Darwin – My First Real Decision

I have nothing against Charles Darwin, and this article is merely a personal anecdote of my very limited encounter with this concepts when I was about 10 years old, about 60 years ago. He was reputed to be a quiet, studious, and hard-working researcher who morphed into a sort of a rock star of the day with his theory of ‘natural selection’, later termed ‘survival of the fittest’ – which represented an enormous challenge to the church at the time. While a church-goer early in life, Darwin later become an agnostic, although his wife maintained the faith.

Seeing many of Darwin’s exhibits in the Royal Museum in London early this century made his work seem suddenly very real and tangible to me, and I appreciated more the toll on the church his shocking evolutionary theories had. Hard evidence is difficult to argue with.

I was a bit surprised to learn that he had 10 children with his wife, his first cousin, which in my estimation is maybe testing the genetic limits a bit. Still, numerous long voyages on the RMS Beagle take their toll, and his reproductive capability cannot be doubted.

My argument with Darwin was the upheaval he threatened in my innocent mind in elementary school. A middle class kid, I was motoring along quite happily in a public elementary school in Edmonton Alberta up to grade four when I first ran into Darwin’s theories via a social studies teacher. The ‘theory of natural selection’ (or as I remembered it ‘survival of the fittest’) was, it seemed to me at the time, presented with a suspicious level of reverence, which it appeared to me was dangerous to dare question. It was delivered with a kind of ‘that’s the way it is, thank God for that, now shut up and move on’ type of attitude. Questioning this topic was quietly not recommended. Somehow I sensed this was a very important concept, although I feared the teacher might considered unnecessary questions reason to warrant an automatic trip to the principal. It seemed dangerous to question. Darwinism was presented as ‘self-evident truth’ it seemed for any kid who was smart enough to want to get through grade 4 with no visible bruising.

Although I don’t remember all the specifics, in ethical desperation, I questioned it anyway. With my mother for sure, who would always defer to the authority of the teachers. Then with the teacher…in a quiet moment….who it became clear had better things to do than debate with a quiet grade 4 boy who was obviously overthinking the topic. Then with some other classmates, carefully chosen for their lack of probability of betrayal, all of whom who simply wondered what my problem was. My last repository of hope was the gentle librarian lady, whom I’d harassed into submission by this time for every possible animal library book available. She bailed out too…maybe I wasn’t understanding…and I should listen to the teacher. When it came to Darwinism, in the 1960’s Canadian public school system all roads lead to Rome, or perhaps the RMS Beagle.

I could not seriously challenge Darwin’s findings, that was for certain, and didn’t want to. I accepted evolution. My problem, being an animal lover, was the seeming celebration of the fate of the smaller, handicapped, or less advantaged animals that were due to be ripped to shreds as food for their superior versions. I wanted a moral explanation of the wisdom of that.

Neither Darwin or the school provided any answer to this. In fact, in appeared the question itself simply wasn’t to be asked. These animals, which possessed intelligence, personalities, families, and souls of their own, supplied nothing more than their bodies as meat to be consumed…a fact we should accept and move past quickly, focused on the benefits to us all. No further consideration was apparently necessary or desirable, and to be asking such questions seemed likely proof of a serious mental defect. You either accepted Darwinism in grade 4 at face value as presented, without question, or you get on your horse and you ride out of Dodge City, and you never come back. Case closed. With no sympathy or alternatives available in the grade 4 cohort, I had a difficult decision to make. To believe and accept, or not to believe, not in the evolutionary process – which seemed obvious – but in the divine wisdom of the slaughter of the weak by the strong. Any serious examination or even acknowledgement of this issue would have been probably enough for me. But there was none.

As the weeks passed, and with me not showing any further doubt to the teacher, I allowed myself to be officially considered a full Darwinian convert.

But I wasn’t. I read books to learn more, thought about it, and secretly agonised over this problem both day and night for what seemed to me to be a very long period of time for a little kid… months I think.. hoping for some type of moral repreive or ethical breakthrough. But none came. The world had bigger fish to fry. It became a non-issue and we moved on.

But not before I had made my first real decision: in spite of all the evidence, all the science, all the authority, and no support, I refused to believe that ‘natural selection’, in the spiritual sense, represented anything that was good, or true, or right. I think that rejecting the status quo, quietly, was my first real decision.

I knew that from that point on, they couldn’t break me. I’ve never said a word about this until now.