Genesis vs. Richard Dawkins on the Origin of Humans

Mock (in-person) Exam, IB HL Philosophy

Stimulus

"God made some men of mud, but they were very soft and limp and couldn't see. They could speak, but what they said didn't make sense. When they got wet they couldn't even stand up. God saw that they were of no use so he broke them up and said "I will try again". Then he made men out of wood. The wooden men were better; they could walk and talk. But he said "These men will not do either. I must destroy them also". And he sent a great flood and the houses of the wooden men fell down. And God wanted to make real men … He took ears of yellow corn of white corn and ground them into meal. With the corn meal he make nine kinds of liquor, and these became man's strength and energies. With the dough of the meal he shaped the body and he made four men, very strong and handsome. They were gifted with intelligence and they managed to know everything there is in the world. While the men slept, he made four women very carefully, and when the men woke, each found at his side a beautiful wife. Then the Creator was troubled, for he realized that these men could see too much and too far, so that they would not really be men, but gods. He saw that he had to change them so that they could be what he needed. So he leaned down and blew mist in their eyes and clouded their vision, like breathing on a mirror, and from then on nothing was clear to their sight except what was close to them.

Write a response (of approximately 800 words) in which you:

·         Identify a central philosophical concept of philosophical issue in the passage or photograph that addresses the question, “what is a human being?”

·         Investigate two different philosophical approaches to the philosophical concept or philosophical issue they identified

·         Explain and evaluate the philosophical concept or philosophical issue they identify

Response

The stimulus outlines an account of the origin of humans which, though distinct from the account given in the book of Genesis, suggests that man is the ‘end product’ of God attempting to make us. This may be said to evoke the philosophical question of whether indeed man is a creation of God; and the consequences of this being true or false – the teleology of man. This is suggested in the extract when, “He [God] had to change them so that they could be what he needed.” Hence, I will explore two approaches to this issue: the account of human being given in the book of Genesis, and the evolutionary account of human being proposed by biologist Richard Dawkins.  

We will begin with the Biblical approach. Genesis tells that, “In the beginning, there was the Word.” From there, God proceeds to make the heavens and the earth; land and sea; day and night; and finally, humans. It demonstrates, therefore, that all of these things were created to accommodate man, and he has dominion over the world. This might imply two possibilities: the first is that man may choose to do with his environment and to animals as he pleases. Having dominion means that God has given us a special place in the world. The second interpretation is that God has gifted the earth and the animals to us, and with these gifts comes a duty of stewardship – we are impelled to treat our environment well, and not to be entitled in its rewards. 

By contrast, Dawkins argues that man’s place in the world is not at all special. While the argument of the book of Genesis, which implies that our relationship to our environment is intimately linked to God’s command, Dawkins argues that there is no God. Arguably the most successful theory of knowledge comes from the mastery we have over nature due to modern natural science. Here, there is no recourse to God – such a deity is not knowable through science, and we have no reason to suppose that He created man. The scientific account Dawkins proposes as an alternative is that man came about by a process of natural selection. In the beginning, rather than ‘the Word’, there was simply a primeval soup consisting of molecules which come into being, and then fade out of existence. Eventually, some such molecule through chance, had the capacity to self-replicate: and so, before its inevitable ‘death’, it was able to make copies of itself. Clearly, the molecule that is best suited to survive in its environment is the one most likely to make copies of itself, which are then themselves able to survive and self-replicate, and so on. Over the course of time, because this replication process is imperfect, mutations arise, and those chance mutations most amenable to survival are propagated. The result of this is that after many millions of years, the results of this process of evolution by natural selection are so well-adapted to their environment that they have an uncanny illusion of having been designed. This, Dawkins argues, is how man came about – small, chance steps accumulating over many generations. 

In this account, the reason that there are men and women is purely an accident of evolution: It was simply the mechanism according to which humans are able to successfully reproduce. Indeed, Dawkins might criticise the Biblical account not only for not being grounded in facts, but because it is self-contradictory. In the first book of Genesis, God is said to have made man and woman, seemingly simultaneously – no distinction is drawn when we are told human being is made in the image of God. However, the second book tells us that God first made man, and then later fashioned woman out of his ribs, because he was lonely. Clearly, Dawkins might argue, these two accounts cannot be believed at the same time, hence casting doubt on the entire enterprise.  

Christians arguing in favour of the Book of Genesis could respond to such a criticism by arguing that the Bible is meant to be understood, not as a literal understanding of the formulation of the universe, but an allegory given to us by God, telling us about our role in the world. They could make the case that the evolutionary account makes no exceptions for humans: there is no God to care about us; we are all alone; we exist simply because of our capacity to survive and reproduce; and there is no reason for us to actually do anything, to protect our environment, or be moral. The lack of teleology in Dawkins’ view may then be seen as a failure.

Dawkins , at this point, might first argue that although believing the account of Genesis is comforting, that it nonetheless comes with the serious disadvantage of being unsupported by evidence; and if God is the only source of our meaning, then it follows that not believing in God would cast us into nihilism, but this need not be the case. It is not true that we need the Bible to tell us to take care of our environment because it is a gift from God; nor that we need it to tell us to treat each other with loving-kindness because we are made in the image of God. Rather, we do the former because it is evolutionarily sensible – we need a place for our descendants to live, to survive, and to reproduce. Similarly, we do the latter because it is an excellent heuristic according to which we can build societies characterised by interdependence that enables us to produce necessities and luxuries that aid our survival at a great rate. Moreover, the teleological account in the Bible is arbitrary, and there is no reason to suspect that it is any better than the teleologies proposed by many other religions. Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, enables us to observe both phenomenology and mechanism across the animal kingdom, and use it to make predictions that are often true, hence validating our theories and lending greater confidence to our account. 

Perhaps what we might criticise Dawkins for is that he lacks an account of human nature, whilst Genesis seeks to provide an account both of human origin and human nature – arguably, Dawkins only does the latter.

For example, Genesis III depicts ‘The Fall’ – the series of events by which first Eve (the first woman) and then Adam (the first man) are beguiled by the serpent into disobeying God’s direct command to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus their eyes are opened, and they are for the first time, cognizant and ashamed of their nudity. This book is clearly making a claim about what human beings are actually like, not just where they came from. In particular, they are selfish and disobedient, and this is the reason that man is banished from paradise (the Garden of Eden) by God, and forced to hard, physical labour to subsist. Indeed, there is much truth to such an account – as is characteristic of much great literature, it has not survived for so long simply on the basis of being comforting.

Although it is impossible to deny that Dawkins is correct about the origin of human being, a view that is testable and holds up to scientific scrutiny, it may still be missing something. It is insensible to abandon the stories of Genesis out of hand because the scientific account is more accurate; it is still a valuable theory and account of human nature. Indeed, religious sentiments are the by-product of evolution. Neither view can be dismissed, but herewith, the conclusion of this investigation is perhaps simply that Dawkins should be dismissed less with reference to the question “what is human being?” from the perspective of our origins; and that Genesis should be dismissed less with reference to that question from the perspective of our nature.

Result

Mark: 20/25

Feedback:

• Well-structured

• Discussion genuinely unfolds

• Interesting conclusion