Customer Reviews

Evolution, Creationism, And Other Modern Myths

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Deloria argues that any current understanding of complex science and any form of dogmatic "fundamentalism" are roughly equally flawed and that the middle path with heart is a spiritual intelligent design view. Deloria points out various of what he claims are widespread (yet supposedly hidden) assumptions of Western religion and Western science, and offers his own take on Native American folk wisdom and other traditions rather than natural selection as the universal acid that explains it all. His view is a hybrid of intelligent design creationism and catastrophism, where meaningful interventions and catastrophes reflect a spiritual dimension to nature.

Deloria shares the basic rhetorical strategy of ID, considering as a conceptual unit the biological theory of natural selection and the cultural values widely associated with evolution, such as the Victorian ideal of social progress. This is part of the widespread assumptions that Deloria is criticizing. It is this combined notion of "emergent change" Deloria seems to refer to when he talks about the "myth of evolution," which often makes his view of evolution very different from Darwin's. If this had been a 19th century treatise on cultural assumptions surrounding the acceptance of Darwin's theories, it would have some remarkable insights. However, as a critique of biology and creationism in the 21st century it seems quaint at best.

It seems ironic to me that Deloria uses Native American tradition as if it were an argument against evolution (and seemingly against natural selection), because we would expect Native Americans to be great observers of details in nature and to be likely to find similar patterns in biogeography to the ones that captured Darwin's imagination on his voyage and which tell us much of what we know of the way living things change over time.

Was there something so unique about the voyage of the Beagle and the culture of Victorian England, or were there Native Americans who also envisioned that physical nature shaped the history of living things? It would have made this book more interesting to me if Deloria had a better grasp on the biological concepts he is arguing against and had speculated a little more flexibly on the relationship of culture and scientific theory. He argues a lot about how no one seems to really understand science, yet he presents Phillip Johnson's idiosyncratic view of evolutionary biology rather than that of evolutionary biologists!

If, as Deloria seems to imply, Native Americans generally didn't find the idea of evolution congenial, then why not? Why was it so compelling in some cultures and not others? If they did, then what is it about natural selection in particular that makes it so incompatible with creationist mythologies, while other forms of evolutionary theory are more compatible?

In order to address these kinds of questions seriously, Deloria would have to make the uncomfortable distinction between the specific mechanism of natural selection and the general concept of evolutionary change, as Michael Denton did in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis." This is a tough thing to ask because it would require him to admit that natural selection itself makes sense and has massive evidence supporting it, and that the core issue is not whether it is true ("proven") or whether it is scientific but rather how much it can explain by itself.

The basic concept of natural selection by itself doesn't explain for example where genetic or phenotypic variety comes from, the constraints on variety relevant to fitness, how heritable variation spreads in a population, what units selection acts upon, and what specifically benefits from natural selection. The relationship between natural selection and the processes of development also provide rich technical considerations.

Rather than accurately being understood as details of the evolutionary process that are all raised as a result of the scientific explanatory power of natural selection, these things are treated by Deloria (as by other creationist authors) as "Criticisms of the theory of evolution" that supposedly strengthen some non-evolutionary alternative theory.

The central argument has little new to commend it, it is a minor variation of the usual form of reasoning you can glean from any previous intelligent design discussion: that (1) "evolution" is a widespread myth accepted for cultural reasons rather than on its scientific evidence, and (2) that the thoughts and actions of a supernatural or spiritual intelligence are more consistent with a meaningful coherent view of nature than the blind accumulation of random changes. I didn't find Deloria's contribution to add anything to Johnson's or Dembski's, it shares their slant and their rhetorical definition of "evolution."

That Deloria argues so similarly to the Christian ID authors yet from the Native American tradition is not an insignificant detail. Unless you believe there is a conspiracy between all these folks, this offers some mild support for the contention that "intelligent design" is not just a fraud concocted by a few fundamentalist Christian authors, but is a pervasive alternate way of looking at nature, shared by multiple traditions.

This doesn't make the systematic misunderstandings of evolutionary theories and philosophy of science any easier to take or any more excusable for a scholar. It does, however, help to appreciate that "creationism" isn't just some religious conspiracy against science. If motive matters in coming to an understanding, then it is important to know that Deloria and the Christian ID authors may not simply be perpetrating a grand hoax, as some anti-ID authors seem to claim, but expressing a different tradition of reasoning.

Deloria does voice some original philosophical ideas in places, but they still rely disappointingly on the standard intelligent design argument. If you don't accept that argument as sound, Deloria comes off as annoyingly shrill in his implicit hostility to the rationalist and liberal aspects of Western culture, and not as insightful about its strengths and weaknesses as we might expect from a keen outside observer.

If on the other hand you're one of those folks who feels that the scientific worldview needs some sort of spiritual overhaul, you may find a kindred spirit here.

Mr. Deloria's scholarship is sound. I've looked at many of his references and it appears that he's been thorough and fair--his critics and reviewers here have not been!

Sadly many of the other critics are apparently either died-in-the-wool evolutionists or else religious folks. Deloria is truly neither, and that is his charm and the source of his brilliance. He is a native American spiritist which is less than ideal. Optimally I'd prefer an agnostic Supreme Court Cheif Justice or a world renowned mathemetician or even the world chess champion.

In short, Deloria clearly demonstrates that creationism, evolutionism and every other theory or myth of our origins is not and cannot truly be rigorous science. He argues convicingly that the only reason we place any emphasis on evolution in science is because scientists feel compelled to take issue with the almost ubiquitous belief in some sort of creator.

As an honest scientist I feel that everyone should give this book and its central concepts a fair reading. We all accept that a disproof of existence is effectively impossible. Why, then, should we all invest so much in a theory that gives us so little. While categorization and adaptation are valuable in themselves, there is nothing of predictive or constructive value to Darwin's theory that we should invest so much of our time and resources trying to support it.

In fact, working to support (rather than to refute) a theory is, by definition, bad science.

Vine Deloria is finally asking the right questions. His is not a political book, but a very sound and very important criticism of what science is and what is is becoming. We can't afford to abandon the enlightenment in order to devote our inquiries soley to supporting pet affections!

Required reading!

There is a good reason why so many used copies of this book are available from Amazon.com for as little as $5. I would gladly give away my copy. This "scholar" has done a great dis-service to those readers who are not sufficiently educated in evolutionary theory to recognize his profound misunderstanding of that subject. Worse, I suspect that Deloria is not merely ignorant but is actually being intentionally misleading in his argument against evolutionary theory and science in general. Scan the bibliography and you will find only references that support the author's argument, rather than any text books or other serious treatments of the science of evolution. Deloria quotes "giants" in the field of evolutionary biology as dismissing evolution as mere "minor changes in body size," but I have never heard of these "giants" during my many years of study toward a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology. I really don't care whether the author believes in Intelligent Design and the Anthropic Principle, both of which are fine examples of tautology (since life exists in the universe, the physical laws governing the universe must be those essential to the emergence of life). But I am very disturbed by the tone of his ridicule and rebuttal of science that gives the reader the impression that he is very well-versed in the subject when, in fact, he is merely quoting the opinions of many non-scientists as if they are findings based on rigorous scientific inquiry. The contemporary term applied to this brand of propaganda is "truthiness," that which has the ring of truth but is in fact false. There is enough popular misunderstanding of what evolutionary theory is and is not, and as a previous reviewer noted, evolution is not the same as cosmology. The focus of evolutionary biology is the change in the genetic makeup of populations of organisms over time, which is not the same thing as explaining the origins of the universe. This book is nothing more than an ideological argument masquerading as a serious thesis on a very important topic.

I have red most of Vine Deloria's books, my favorite being God Is Red. I read most of them 15 years ago and loved them. I think if I had read this one back then I would have loved it and given it five stars here. But I have spent the past five years reading A LOT about evolution and the Creationism/Intelligent Design "controversy" and then I read this book that, at least by its title, seemed to offer a bridge or at least something fresh on the subject. But like many reviewers here I have found the great Vine Deloria a total flop with this subject, and this book a crashing disappointment. This book reads pretty much like the "creationist" attacks on science and the theory of evolution I have read from the Christian fundamentalists. Neither he nor they want to take the time and effort to really understand what the theory really is, and what scientific thinking and method is. Instead he resorts to straw-man attacks on scientists, saying they are as "faith-based" as religious people. I would have believed this ten years ago; now that I have taken the time to study the subject I simply cannot buy it, sad to say.

This is an interesting and reasonable assessment of the Darwin debate from a most interesting and different perspective, and one that is unususual for seeing the Darwin debate as a whole, and the subtle dialectical collusion of the two parties to the dispute, Creationists and scientists. We become so mesmerized by the details of opposing viewpoints that we fail to see the real battle, which is over normative fixations of belief, and the displacement of the middle ground. The author here simply steps past both viewpoints, taking, howevr, a somewhat warmer stance toward the Intelligent Design thinkers, rightly seeing that this perspective, beyond it trappings, can go either way. Time to hear from the shaman contingent.
One of the great oddities of the development of evolutionism is the reductionist cast that cannot make hide nor hare of the clear, and unmistakable traces of early man's 'spirituality' and evolution, so visible in the late descendants of the great Spirit and shaman traditions. While it is absolutely difficult to reconstruct what this might have been like in truly primordial stages of human evolution, we must be suspicious that some such cultural form was intrinsically connected to the core cultural evolution of early man.
Agree or not, this is a balanced critique of the embarassingly obvious mindset of the one-dimensional Darwinians.

Agree or not, this is a balanced critique of the embarassingly obvious mindset of the one-dimensional Creationists. I do agree with you, however, that this book is a wonderful addition to the debate from both sides, and attempts to shed some light on the "middle ground," so to speak. I found it to be an interesting and thought provoking work.

I can hardly bear to relive this experience by writing a review. I have a BSc and majored in Biology. Let me just say that Deloria displays a remarkable ignorance of the theory of evolution.

IMHO:

He makes the most confused and muddled statements. They have the morphology of argument somewhat, but utterly lack coherence. He makes bald assertions unsupported by either references* or logical arguments.

Note the '*' above for this footnote: There are TONS of references in the book but none of the ones I really looked at supported his conclusions/assertions. Most aggravating is the fact that he shamelessly misinterprets those he quotes and/or cites facts that are completely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

I just grabbed this from the library on my way out today. I don't think I have ever entered a book review here, but I just had to say something.

This book is a complete waste of time.

I must state upfront that I only read a small portion of this book, just to get the "flavor" of it. It left a bad taste! In his chapter on evolution, he tosses in a couple quotes by Keith Ward, who is a THEOLOGIAN. Deloria cites an inconsistency in Ward's (ignorant) statements about evolution, and tries to use that inconsistency as a criticism of evolution itself. This is, at best, very sloppy writing, and arguably dishonest.

Vine Deloria has done brilliant work in the past. It's sad to see him dilute his legacy with silliness like this. The lack of intellectual rigor that underlies his superficial (mis)understanding of the theory of evolution is shocking to anyone who has read his previous work. He simply hasn't sat down, rolled up his sleeves, and done the groundwork necessary to take on a project of this nature.

As one reviewer said, "The author, in what seems to be an attempt to make the two groups equivalent, states that both creationists and scientists require us to take things on faith."

That's right, and he does so beautifully. Science and creationism are both faith based and if you carefully read Deloria, you will see his arguments are sound, that is, unless you let your paradigms get in the way like some of the reviews in here. OPEN your mind!

The nice thing about this book, even if you disagree with Deloria, it will still give you food for thought, something intellectual to ponder. GET IT .... READ IT .... check your library, that's where I found it. Great read!