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March 12, 2008
Chesterton Thursdays, VII.
"What I venture to criticize in certain men, whom some call scientists and I call materialists, is their perpetual use of Mythology. One half of what they say is so true as to be trite; the other half of what they say is so untrue as to be transparent. But they cover both their platitudes and their pretenses by an elaborate parade of legendary and allegorical images. I read this in some remarks on Darwinism by one of the last surviving Darwinians:
"Among the individuals of every species there goes on, as Malthus had realised, a competition of struggle for the means of life, and Nature selects the individuals which vary in the most successful direction."
Now when men of the old religions said that God chose a people and raised up a prophet, at least they meant something; and they meant what they said. They meant that a being with a mind and a will used them in an act of selection. But who is Nature, and how does she, or he, or it, manage to select anything or anybody? All that the writer actually has to say is that some individuals do emerge when other individuals are extinguished.
It hardly needed either Darwin or Darwinians to tell us that.
But Nature selecting those that vary in the most successful direction means nothing whatever, except that the successful succeed...this tautological truism is wrapped up in clouds of mythology, by the introduction of a mythical being whom even the writer regards as a myth."
(Myths and Metaphors, by G. K. Chesterton. Originally published in The Illustrated London News, 26th January 1929.)
I couldn't agree more.
Chesterton Thursdays , Tub-Bloggin' | By Carl | 10:57 PM
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