Re: Hunter on Darwin and Gnosticism

Dear Cornelius (George) Hunter:
I apologize for spreading any personal misinformation. I should have
written "financially independent of the Discovery Institute", and I now
understand that that is a correct statement. I did not say that you were
associated with the DI as an institution. I would claim that it is
reasonable for me to say as I did that you are closely associated with
members of the CSC of the Discovery Institute since all four people who
endorsed your book on its cover (Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William
Dembski, Stephen Meyer) are members or advisors of the CSC of the DI.

I did read the whole of Gillespie's book at the time that I wrote my
review. My reading of it was different from your reading. Do you now
wish to discuss this and such matters as neo-gnosticism in detail? (I
have also read your later book, "Darwin's Proof".)
Don

Cornelius Hunter wrote:

> Don Nield:
>
> I understand you posted a message (pasted below), where you find my
> book *Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil* wanting because
> you didn't find the word "theodicy" in the index of Neal Gillespie's
> *Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation.* Fascinating. What is
> particularly ironic here is that of all books you might have chosen,
> Gillespie well documents Darwin's concerns about dysteleology and
> natural evil, in support of his strong arguments that divine creation
> must be false. You might try reading the book instead of the index.
> But that's not the reason I'm posting. I'm posting because you also
> are spreading personal misinformation about me:
>
> "I now refer to a book by another author, who I undertand is
> financially independent but who is closely associated with members of
> the Discovery Institute, namely "Darwin's God", by Cornelius G. (George)
> Hunter."
>
> I have no association whatsoever with the Discovery Institute and I am
> not financially independent.
>
> --George
>
>
>
> ==============
>
> I am sorry that James Mahaffy feels that the response on this list to
> the writings of Nancy Pearcey have been unfair, and that he wonders why
> ID brings such an automatic negative response, one involving a
> stereotype. I
> would suggest that the response is not automatic and not unfair. As I
> see it, Nancy writes not as an individual but as a member of a team, as
> a Fellow of the CRC of the Discovery Institute, which has a well
> publicized agenda. It is thus reasonable to compare her current book, in
> which she has opted to include a substantial amount of material on ID,
> with publications of her DI colleagues. Nancy chose to endorse (on the
> back cover) Wiker's book, joining Dembski (who wrote the foreword,)
> Johnson, Wells and Behe in so doing.
>
> It seems to me that in the ID literature one can legitimately discern a
> consistent anti-evolution bias when the discussion turns to historical
> matters. I now refer to a book by another author, who I undertand is
> financially independent but who is closely associated with members of
> the Discovery Institute, namely "Darwin's God", by Cornelius G. (George)
> Hunter. This book is endorsed by Johnson (front cover), and Behe,
> Dembski and Meyer (back cover). As it happens, I wrote a review of this
> book that was not intended for NCSE but ended up their Reports (Jan-Apr.
> 2002)
> http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol22/8784_idarwin39s_god_evo
> lution_12_30_1899.asp
> Here are some excerpts from my review:
>
> *****According to Johnson, Hunter brilliantly supports his thesis that
> Darwinism is a mixture of metaphysical dogma and biased scientific
> observation, that "at its core, evolution is about God, not science".
> According to Behe, Hunter argues perceptively that the main supporting
> pole of the Darwinian tent has always been a theological assertion; "God
> wouldn't have done it that way."
> .............
>
> Hunter says that it was reasonable for Darwin to argue that God would
> not be personally involved in the swallow's attack on the gnat - not
> because of any finding of modern science but because of the persistence
> of Gnosticism into modern times, and given such a premise it was then
> reasonable to conclude that God is altogether removed from the world.
> .................................
>
> The question now is whether Hunter has made his case or whether his book
> should be regarded as a revisionist reading of history in line with the
> " Wedge" doctrine of the "intelligent design" movement. There is no
> doubt that Darwin was concerned with the religious implications of
> evolution, but was he driven by religious considerations? To help answer
> this question, I have studied the book /Charles Darwin and the Problem
> of Creation/ by Neal C Gillespie (Chicago: Unversity of Chicago Press,
> 1979). The author was Professor of History at Georgia State University.
> Hunter gives eight inconsequential references to Gillespie's book, but
> does not seriously engage with him.
>
> Gillespie (p. 135) wrote
>
> <> There can be no real doubt as to Darwin's theism during the years
> that he prepared for and wrote the /Origin/. Aside from the strong
> evidence in his writing, he tells us in his /Autobiography/ that the
> need for postulating an intelligent First Cause as initiating the
> universe - a belief implied in the theological arguments in the /Origin/
> - "was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when
> I wrote the /Origin of Species." / When Dr Pusey seemed to accuse him of
> having written the /Origin/ as an attack on religion and not as science,
> Darwin replied indignantly that Pusey was "mistaken in imagining that I
> wrote the /Origin /with any relation whatever to theology" (not exactly
> the case, as we have seen), and that "when I was collecting facts for
> the /Origin/, my belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as
> that of Dr. Pusey himself.
>
> Theodicy is not listed in the index of Gillespie's book. In the light of
> this I find Hunter's thesis difficult to accept. It is correct that
> there is an element of truth in what Hunter says. Elsewhere (p. 133)
> Gillespie notes that later in his life, in the passage that concludes
> /The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, /Darwin/
> /presents us with the quandary that he himself never resolved: if God is
> omnipotent and omniscient then it is hard to see why he is not also
> irrational and even immoral in producing superfluous laws of nature and
> waste of life. "Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as
> insoluble as that of free will and predestination." Thus Darwin
> certainly recognized that his work involved the problem of theodicy, but
> that is completely different from Hunter's claim that it was
> consideration of theodicy that led Darwin to advance his theory of
> evolution.******
>
> One of the things that I did not pick up at the time that I wrote my
> review is Hunters's peculiar use of the term "neo-gnostics" to refer to
> Darwinists. I later inferred by following up one of his footnotes that
> Hunter got his idea from Harold Bloom, a Jewish literary critic, who
> wrote "The American Religion" (Sinon & Schuster, 1992). It seems to me
> that this is a far fetched idea. (I mention this because I know of one
> person who now writes off theistic evolutionists as neo-gnostics.)

> Don
Received on Sun Jul 31 16:49:05 2005