Darwin and Design: The Real Meaning of the Darwinian Revolution

Michael Ruse (Florida State University)

Many people, notably Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, argue – or are taken to argue – that the chief effect of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was to finish off Christianity. I shall argue that the story is more complex – and interesting – than this. Darwin’s chief achievement was to show how the design-like nature of organisms – the hand, the eye, the heart – can be explained by unbroken law, without direct need of a reference to a Designer, a deity like the Demiurge in Plato’s Timaeus. Having offered up such an explanation, the way was opened for sound non-belief, although almost always non-believers – agnostics and atheists – take their stance less on science and more on grounds of theology and philosophy.