There is a disconnect here. But, regardless of Dawkins’s views on Miller, there can be no doubt that Miller’s claim to believe in “Darwin’s God” is dead wrong. Darwin’s beliefs fluctuated, but they never fluctuated as far as atheism at the one extreme and theism at the other.
Was Darwin a Deist?
Darwin was neither an atheist nor a theist. So what alternative positions are left? Essentially two: agnosticism, a label which Darwin sometimes applies to himself, evidently with some reluctance; and deism, or belief in an impersonal God, which Darwin never mentions but which would actually appear to be quite a good match for his beliefs. Here are some reasons why Darwin may be labelled a deist:
Darwin’s concern about suffering — even extending to cat- and-mouse play — made him reject belief in the personal loving God of theism. But the impersonal God of deism is neutral and amoral and would presumably have designed cat-and-mouse games as part of the natural order of things;
Darwin’s two-tier universe, with the big picture governed by “designed laws” or “fixed laws” while the details are left to chance, fits well with deism: the universe is created by a supernatural Designer, who is also responsible for the origin of life and who then sets up evolution by natural selection as the mechanism for further variations.
There is a mismatch between theism and evolution but not between deism and evolution. Evolution is based on scientific evidence, while belief in a theistic personal God requires a leap of faith. Moreover, if you are trying to combine theism with evolution, which theistic God are you to choose? Should it be the Christian God, complete with a divine Christ, a Holy Spirit, miracles, an afterlife and intercession in the day-to-day world? Or perhaps the more genuinely monotheistic Jewish or Islamic God? Or maybe the polytheistic Gods of Hinduism?
As we have also seen, the combination of deism and evolution also neatly fits in with the divide between the three stages of the earth’s development: (i) the coming into existence of the universe, including the earth; (ii) the origin of life; and (iii) evolution by natural selection.
The existence of cruelty in the world — even including a cat playing with a mouse — is what made Darwin reject belief in creation by “a beneficent and omnipotent God”. That is a picture of the personal God of theism. The impersonal God of the deists, on the other hand, is neither “beneficent” nor “omnipotent” but completely amoral and not involved in the day-to-day affairs of the world. So the impersonal God of the deists could not possibly prevent the existence of cruelty in the world. Therefore, the existence of cruelty should be no bar to believing in an impersonal God.
Why didn’t Darwin realise this? In fact, although deism had had its adherents for many centuries before Darwin’s time and although Darwin’s own extended family was strongly Unitarian (which was theist, not deist, at the time) and his grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) was a well-known freethinker and natural philosopher, there is no indication that Darwin was consciously aware of deism. Darwin’s direct religious background and his intention in going up to Cambridge to become an Anglican clergyman only corroborate this impression.
But, although the existence of cruelty made Darwin reject belief in the personal God of conventional religion, he did not reject belief in deliberate design altogether. He ends up with a two-tier universe, in which the big picture is the result of “designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance”.162
Where did these “designed laws” or “fixed laws”, as he calls them elsewhere, come from? Darwin made no secret of his belief that they were designed by “an omniscient Creator”. The phrase “whether good or bad” is significant and places Darwin in a position not very different from a believer in an impersonal God, who is amoral and uninvolved in the world. So, although Darwin may not have been conscious of deism as such, his own religious beliefs are a good match for deism, or possibly for pandeism (as discussed earlier in this chapter).
Review Of Chapter Three
There are two main types of Gods in whom one may believe: a personal God and an impersonal God. Belief in a personal God, or theism, is the basis of conventional religion, while belief in an impersonal God, or deism, tends to be more informal.
Theism comes with a lot of baggage, such as divine omniscience, omnipotence, revelation, reward and punishment, and miracles — for none of which is there any reliable evidence and which therefore require a leap of faith.
Deism has none of this baggage and is therefore a lot easier to accept than theism.
The subtitle to Dawkins’s Blind Watchmaker — “Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design” — is misleading.
There are three (condensed from seven) stages in the development of the universe: (i) the coming into existence of the universe; (ii) the origin of life; and (iii) change and variation in living organisms.
Evolution obviously can’t explain the first two stages, because life is needed before evolution can kick in.
Deism offers a more plausible explanation than either atheism or theism for the coming into existence of the universe.
Deism also offers a more plausible explanation than either atheism or theism for the origin of life.
As for stage three, Dawkins’s insistence that natural selection is not random combined with Daniel Dennett’s “counter-intuitive” theory that smaller simpler things can create bigger more complex things is not convincing.
Darwin’s writings themselves effectively admit that there is no proof of natural selection.
Natural selection works in regard to small variations but does not explain the larger ones.
Moreover, random genetic drift rather than natural selection now appears to be the main mechanism of evolution.
There are some heated disputes among evolutionists, including a major spat between Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, the famous Harvard biologist, in which Wilson denied that Dawkins is a scientist, describing him instead as an “eloquent science journalist”.
These major disagreements among evolutionists only underline just how tenuous the evidence is for their various conflicting theories.
Deism is an embarrassment to the New Atheists, and Dawkins even charges physicists who are deists with “intellectual high treason”.
Darwin himself stated quite unequivocally: “I have never been an atheist.”
Darwin was also not a theist — despite Kenneth Miller’s claim in Finding Darwin’s God that he, a committed Roman Catholic, believes in “Darwin’s God”.
Darwin sometimes described himself as an agnostic, but his expressed religious beliefs are in general more in keeping with deism, or possibly with pandeism.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two Types of Religion
The atheist author Christopher Hitchens denounced “organized religion” as “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children”.163 It should be noted that this litany is applied only to “organized religion” and is therefore presumably — and justifiably — not meant to include deism. However, even the mildest of these poisonous epithets — “intolerant” — cannot be accepted as a blanket description of all theistic religions either. A distinction has to be drawn between two types of theistic religions: communal religions and creed religions, and, though creed religions have tended to be intolerant, communal religions are generally tolerant — and degrees of toleration have fluctuated over time.
The classification of theistic religions into communal religions and creed religions was first suggested by myself in my book Is Christianity True?, originally published in 1984.164 It is not the only way that religions can be classified, and it cuts across most other classifications. But it is easy enough to justify — and, above all, I believe it is a deeper, more meaningful and more useful classification than any other.
Why Does This Matter?
Why does the classific
ation of religions matter? Chiefly in order to test whether there really is any correlation between a religion’s classification and its degree of toleration both of other religions and also of other denominations and groupings within itself.
However, as was seen in Chapter 1, prejudice, discrimination and even conflict expressed in terms of religion may actually turn out upon closer examination to be essentially political, social or economic in nature. Northern Ireland is a case in point, as was well demonstrated by the fact that a political settlement was eventually found to this essentially political conflict in the “Good Friday Agreement” of 1998, ratified by a referendum, which resulted not only in the fiercely anti-Catholic Unionist Rev. Ian Paisley working closely with the Catholic Republican Martin McGuinness in the Northern Ireland Executive, but also in their becoming firm friends, laughing and joking together and earning the nickname the “Chuckle Brothers”.
The reason that creed religions tend to be intolerant is that each of them (and each denomination, group or sect) believes that it and it alone embodies the “truth” and holds the key to “salvation”. So, by definition, all other religions or groups are inferior and as a result suffer intolerance, discrimination or persecution at the hands of the believers in the one “true” faith.
A communal religion, by contrast, will not normally regard itself as the only “true” faith and will expect other nations and peoples each to have its own religion, thus breeding toleration plus a disinclination to evangelise.
But what if it turned out that one religion, faith or anti-faith (e.g. atheism) did indeed embody the “truth”? Would that entitle its adherents to discriminate against “heretics”, “infidels” or those who labour under “inferior” or “erroneous” beliefs? Obviously not. Yet such is the arrogance of most creed religions — and the “New Atheism” or “Militant Atheism” as well — that intolerance is endemic among them. The same attitude is not displayed by communal religions.
That is why it is important to examine the beliefs of each of the contenders to see if there is a vestige of truth to their claims. So far, as I have attempted to show, the religion that has the best claim on credibility is not really a religion at all — neither atheism, nor a creed religion, nor even a communal religion but belief in an impersonal deistic God.
Having already examined the rival claims of theism, deism and atheism in regard to the development of the universe in the previous chapter, I devote this chapter to an analysis of the dichotomy between communal and creed religions, Chapter 5 to Judaism, Chapter 6 to Christianity and Chapter 7 to Islam and Shinto, before taking a step back and viewing the whole scene from a distance and tying all the threads together in Chapter 8.
Creed Religions
A creed religion is one which is based on a set of beliefs. Christianity and Islam are the two prime creed religions in the world today, while Judaism, Hinduism and Japanese Shinto are essentially communal religions. Every creed religion — and every denomination, group or sect within each creed religion — has a definite set of beliefs, deviation from which can result in excommunication or worse. It is typical of a creed religion to believe that it is the only “true” religion and that it holds the key to “salvation”. Going hand in hand with this belief is an evangelical tendency. Creed religions are generally eager to gain new converts, so missionary zeal and proselytism are high on their agenda.
As belief is central to creed religions, the slightest variation in belief can result in non-conformists being branded as heretics or infidels. Creed religions therefore tend to be intolerant of other religions and even of other denominations, groups or sects within their own religion. The historic conflict between Catholics and Protestants is a prime example, as is that currently in evidence between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims.
Communal Religions
Communal religions were the original type of religion, and most religions of the ancient world were of this type. The “pagan” civic religions of Ancient Greece and Rome are prime examples. You were deemed to be a member of the Roman religion, for example, simply by virtue of being a member of Roman society and a subject of the Roman state. That is why the Roman state religion had no distinctive name. The adherents of this ancient religion were dubbed by Christians pagans (meaning “country folk” or “rustics”), but that was not in any sense the name of the religion or of its devotees. The identity of “pagan” Romans was not defined by their religion but by their citizenship and their community.
For the same reason, religious conversion is not a feature of communal religions. For example, converting from Shintoism to Hinduism would require a Japanese person to become Indian — because these communal religions are indivisible from the societies to which they belong.
In the ancient world every state and society had its own religion with its own god or gods. Members of that society or community were expected to worship at the national shrines and perform the rituals associated with the national religion. The idea of conversion was practically unknown in the ancient world. The only time when people would convert was when they were conquered by a foreign power. Then they would be absorbed into the conqueror’s state and society — and with that into the conqueror’s religion.
Alternative Classifications of Religions
My binary communal/creed classification contrasts sharply with the conventional grouping in terms of historical origins, according to which Judaism, Christianity and Islam are lumped together as belonging to the same “family” of religions sometimes labelled “Abrahamic religions”. The common historical origin of these three religions is true enough but misleading, because while Christianity and Islam are creed religions Judaism is essentially a communal religion although no longer a pure one. (See Chapter 5 for more on Judaism.)
The categorisation of religions in terms of monotheism and poly-theism is also unhelpful, because it again groups Judaism, Christianity and Islam together and places Hinduism and most religions of the ancient world in a separate bracket. For our purposes Hinduism should be grouped with Judaism as a communal religion, while Christianity and Islam should be bracketed together as creed religions.
Josiah Conder’s 1838 classification was an expanded version of the traditional subjective fourfold grouping: Christianity, Judaism, Islam (referred to as “Mahommedanism”) and “Paganism”, with the addition of a few smaller categories of his own, finishing up with the highly tendentious label, “illiterate superstitions”.165
The classification of religions into ethnic and world religions overlaps to some extent with my communal/creed dichotomy but is misleading and also subjective. Some communal religions, but by no means all, are confined to one ethnic group. The ancient Roman civic religion, for example, which was undoubtedly a communal religion, was shared by the diverse elements of the ethnically mixed population of the Roman Empire.
And the label “world religions”, normally applied to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, has been criticised as an essentially western-biased classification and has led to something of a backlash against the teaching of “World Religions” courses at certain American universities.166
Joel Tishken has proposed replacing the ethnic/world religion dichotomy with an ethnic/evangelical classification.167 But that classification has the wrong emphasis for our purposes. The religions in my creed religion category are indeed largely evangelical or proselytising religions, but that is not their sole or even their main characteristic, which is simply that they are centred on a creed or a set of beliefs, which is not the case with communal religions.168
Communal and Creed Religions — A Comparison
Here are some of the key respects which differentiate communal and creed religions:
Communal Religions — No Distinctive Name
Communal religions usually do not have a name distinguishing them from their state, community or society because membership of a communal religion is an integral part of being a member of the nation, community or society concerned:
The civic religion of classical Greece likewise had no distinctive name. The citizens of each Greek city-state would automatically be expected to worship the civic gods as an integral part of their citizenship. “Impiety”, or non-belief in the gods of the Athenian state, one of the two charges against the famous philosopher Socrates (469–399 BCE), on which he was convicted and put to death, was actually essentially a charge of treason rather than a specifically religious charge. In the late 4th century CE, after Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians in the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Empire started calling adherents of the traditional Greek polytheistic religion Hellenes, which just means “Greeks”. However, in the mouth of Christians it became a pejorative label equivalent to the use of pagans in the western Latin-speaking half of the Roman Empire.
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