Darwin never met Nibbler or Phaedo

We finished up this week with in proper Oxford style with a Great Darwinian Debate. The proposition: this [Victorian] house proposes that Darwinism is a danger to established religion. I was on the proposing side, representing the views of St. George Jackson Mivart, who actually ended up being a pretty compelling character. An English zoologist by trade, Mivart was initially in support of Darwin’s theory of evolution when it was first published. Later, however, he became one of its fiercest critics, trying to reconcile the theory with his devout Catholic faith. In the end, he didn’t make any friends and was roundly condemned in the academic and religious communities.

St. George Jackson Mivart

Where Darwin’s and Mivart’s views diverge has to do with the matter of the soul, human reason, and our sense of morality. Darwin believed that humans evolved our cognitive abilities in the classic evolutionary sense—a useful characteristic that promoted reproductive success and thus became commonplace in the species. Mivart, however, felt that the soul was a uniquely human facet and a product of “direct or supernatural action”. If Darwinism held true, Mivart feared that any sufficiently evolved organism could develop human intellectual capabilities, contrary to the Scripture which says “God created mankind in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). The prospect of otters being able to practice and adhere to their faith sounds like a threat to established religion to me-- though a very cute one. 

Is the human soul potentially an evolutionary mechanism to promote the reproductive success of our species? Funnily enough, it’s some combination of my Catholic upbringing and biological/hard science education that’s brought me to my current conclusion—which is apt to change. Mutation is the source of variation within a species, and I simply cannot imagine that my entire consciousness is the result of what must have been numerous genetic malfunctions. Is the source of my consciousness in my genome? What genes need to be mutated to engineer a mind? It’s my Catholic School education, my desire to keep some of the inner workings of my head a special blessing that makes me believe that my mind cannot be expressed in an arbitrary string of nucleotide bases. It has to be impossible that all my thoughts (though I do believe they are the result of some physiological mechanism) evolved from the luckily non-fatal distortion of ancient mammalian genes.

Then again, I fully embrace the fact that I know nothing about consciousness or neuroscience (or anything). I am completely certain though, my brother’s cats do have some sort of cognitive abilities, usually employed while they make mischief about the house. As I’ve tried to impress upon them many times, natural selection really doesn’t work in favor of cute and edible cats. Maybe their entire existence is a testament to the failures of Darwin.

This is Phaedo, who's also got his thinking cap on

 

This is Nibbler. Don't tell me this isn't the face
of a cat who's thinking some deep thoughts