Page 72 - The Evolution Impasse 2

70 Naturalism

NATURALISM der lay it. It there fore re ceived sup -
port and was im posed on so ci e ty as
In gen er al terms, nat u ral ism is a
if it were a ma jor sci en tif ic truth.
phi los o phy that rec og niz es no oth er
Otherwise, it would have been re -
re al i ty aside from na ture and the
gard ed as the spec u la tion of an am a -
world per ceived by the five sens es.
teur bi ol o gist and quick ly for got ten.
Naturalism, one of the most sig nif i -
cant pro ducts of the 19th cen tu ry
athe is tic at mos phere, in flu enced
NATURAL SELECTION
Darwin and drove him to of fer an
athe is tic ex pla na tion for life. Natural se lec tion is based on the
According to this way of think ing, hy poth e sis that there is a con stant
na ture it self was re gard ed as its own strug gle for sur viv al among spe cies
cre a tor and ar bi ter. Concepts such as and those liv ing things that are
Mother Nature or cli chés such as strong est and best adapt ed to nat u -
"Nature gave some peo ple su pe ri or ral con di tions sur vive that strug gle
abil i ties; na ture made hu mans what and live to prop a gate them selves.
they are," are still wide ly em ployed For ex am ple, in a herd of deer, those
to day, but are the re sult of pre con - an i mals that are nat u ral ly able to run
cep tions im posed by nat u ral ism. fast will es cape pred a tors and sur -
Naturalists were great ad mir ers vive. Naturally, this herd will soon
of the per fec tion in the phys i cal con sist of deer that are all able to run
world, yet found it dif fi cult to give a quick ly.
sat is fac to ry an swer to how this came But note that no mat ter how long
in to be ing. Since they adopt ed pos i -
tiv ist dog ma, and be lieved on ly in
con cepts whose ex is tence could be
es tab lished by means of ex per i ment
and ob ser va tion, they fierce ly re ject -
ed the fact that na ture was cre at ed
by Allah. In their view, na ture cre at -
ed it self.
Darwin's the o ry served nat u ral -
ist/ma te ri al ist phi los o phy, or to be
more ac cu rate, the athe ism that un -
Fossilized deer

The Evolution Impasse II