D'Souza on Darwin

I agree with Dinesh D'Souza's central thesis today: the biological theory of evolution does not, by itself, imply atheism or disprove supernaturalism. I hope that D'Souza's more evangelical brethren note at least the first part of D'Souza's claim: "[W]e can embrace Darwin's account of evolution without embracing his metaphysical naturalism and unbelief." If you're going to be a Christian, at least be a sophisticated one, not a snake charmer.

Beyond that, true to form, D'Souza impugns the motives of his opponents. D'Souza suggests that various atheists latch on to evolution as a way to display their hostility to religion and to God. He writes of Darwin:

When his young daughter Annie died at the age of 10, Darwin came to hate the God whom he blamed for this. This was in 1851, eight years before Darwin released his Origin of Species.

Around the time of Annie's death, Darwin also wrote that if Christianity were true then it would follow that his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and many of his closest family friends would be in hell. Darwin found this utterly unacceptable, given that these men were wise and kind and generous. Darwin's rejection of God was less an act of unbelief as it was a rebellion against the kind of God posited by Christianity. A God who would allow a young girl to die and good people to go to hell was not anyone that Darwin wanted to worship.

Whether or not Darwin's initial motivation was hatred of God, it's neither fair nor accurate to turn concerns over tragedies and hell into basically psychological issues. There is a big difference between rebelling against God -- which presumes the existence of God -- and concluding that God does not exist (and therefore there is no God to blame or rebel against).

D'Souza himself has acknowledged the theoretical difficulties of a God who permits " all the suffering" in the world. And the stricter notions of hell do tend toward a reductio ad absurdum of the faith. Now, many Christians have decent answers to the problem of suffering, and some Christians reject hell altogether. So neither of these issues definitively disproves Christianity.

Issues like evolution, suffering, and hell can prompt one to reconsider the more fundamental foundations of one's religion. While none of those issues, by itself, disproves religion, enough such concerns can -- and should -- promote a deeper examination of one's religious faith. Whether one ultimately retains or rejects that faith depends on one's deeper philosophical conclusions.

Hitchens, D'Souza Debate (Again)

Does God exist? Jean Torkelson reviews the recent debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens. I didn't attend the debate, as I didn't want to surrender $10 plus an evening to go.

Here's a telling line from D'Souza: "To me, doubt is intrinsic to religious belief. 'Belief' is not the same thing as 'knowledge.' If I knew for sure, I wouldn't have belief. Belief means trusting in God even (with) doubts. That doesn't make belief unreasonable or irrational."

But there is a huge difference between believing something is probably true based on spotty evidence, and believing that God exists based on no evidence. Of course D'Souza claims that various facts about the natural world demonstrate the existence of God, but the natural facts he cites do not support his supernatural conclusion. Notice how D'Souza tries to have it both ways: he claims to prove the existence of God, but in the end he claims that such a proof is unnecessary. God is not only unproved but unprovable and conceptually incoherent. But, as D'Souza makes clear, he will go on "trusting in God" even though he has no good reason for doing so, and such a practice is indeed unreasonable and irrational.

Hitchens, D'Souza Bring Road Show to Town

The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought is organizing a Boulder debate on religion between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens, Catholic News Agency reports.

If I were a Christian, I would promote this debate, too. As noted, Hitchens holds that moral knowledge is innate, an indefensible position. So, while Hitchens makes many fine arguments around the periphery, he cannot answer the central question: what is morality without God?

Ben Degrow has a little fun with a Daily Camera headline, "Conservative D’Souza, atheist Hitchens to debate God at CU." Degrow posits that a "debate against the Almighty" wouldn't "be a fair fight by any remote stretch of human imagination."

On the contrary. I'm betting that, no matter how the debate organizers prayed or promoted their event, God would be a no-show.

D'Souza Trounces Singer

Dinesh D'Souza smashes ants and declares himself a giant. D'Souza, who tends to declare himself the winner of debates with various atheists, is no doubt correct when it comes to his self-assessment against Peter Singer.

D'Souza ridiculously counts Singer as among "the most effective advocates of atheism" and "the best that the opposition has to offer." You've got to be kidding me. I know a lot of atheists personally, and not a single one takes Singer's views remotely seriously. Besides, Singer is not primarily an atheist, he is primarily a (bad) ethicist. That is, his main business is not disproving the existence of God, but concocting wild theories about how people should live.

Ah, but D'Souza asserts:

...I suggested that Singer was a perfect illustration of what you get when you reject God and attempt to construct ethics on a purely secular, Darwinian foundation. Singer’s atheism, I suggested, is the primary foundation of his advocacy of infanticide, euthanasia, and animal rights.

His assertion is ludicrous. What does Singer's bizarre utilitarianism have to do with evolutionary theory? D'Souza doesn't say in his article; the correct answer is nothing.

Atheism is not a positive philosophy. It does not, as D'Souza endlessly asserts, imply socialism, Singer's views, or any other particular idea. Atheism is a negative. It asserts that God (and the supernatural) does not exist.

D'Souza thinks that, absent religion, morality is impossible, but he is simply wrong. Aristotle formulated a non-religious, Eudaimonistic ethic long ago, and in the modern age Ayn Rand and her followers have revealed the foundation of morality in the nature of human life.

But D'Souza is interested in apologetics, not in actually refuting the "the best that the opposition has to offer," which he has never squarely faced.

ID or Multiverse?

Dinesh D'Souza wants to have his proof and eat it, too. He writes:

If you want to know why atheists seem to have given up the scientific card, the current issue of Discover magazine provides part of the answer. The magazine has an interesting story by Tim Folger which is titled "Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator." The article begins by noting "an extraordinary fact about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for life."

Science thus far has provided no good explanation for this. So, D'Souza concludes, God exists. But this is a completely unjustifiable move. The fact that we don't know something doesn't mean we can just make stuff up. Throughout much of human history, science could not explain lightning, weather, and the development of life. Before science could provide such answers, plenty of people jumped to God (or some supernatural force) as the explanation.

Things in the universe have identity, they act according to their nature, and so it is not remotely shocking that the universe is in some fundamental sense orderly. That fact that we do not yet understand aspects of this order does not imply the existence of God.

Unfortunately, as D'Souza notes, some physicists, detached from the inductive method, have also turned to making stuff up:

[M]many physicists are exploring an alternative possibility: multiple universes. This is summed up as follows: "Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse." Folger says that "short of invoking a benevolent creator" this is the best that modern science can do. For contemporary physicists, he writes, this "may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation" for our fine-tuned universe.

The appeal of multiple universes -- perhaps even an infinity of universes -- is that when there are billions and billions of possibilities, then even very unlikely outcomes are going to be realized somewhere. Consequently if there was an infinite number of universes, something like our universe is certain to appear at some point. What at first glance seems like incredible coincidence can be explained as the result of a mathematical inevitability.

I just read the same idea last night in Neal Stephenson's new novel Anathem. Yet, as D'Souza points out, "The only difficulty, as Folger makes clear, is that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of any universes other than our own."

The only difficulty for D'Souza is that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God, either.

Perkins vs. D'Souza: Morality

In his fourth essay criticizing Dinesh D'Souza, Greg Perkins notes that D'Souza accuses atheists of rebelling against moral rules. After summarizing why that's not the case for atheists who know what they're talking about, Perkins adds:

[T]he religionists are themselves guilty of the sin of moral subjectivism. The essence of subjectivism is acting on whim -- wishing, assuming, feeling, or declaring that facts will align themselves with thoughts and lives. Of course, this gets it exactly backwards: thoughts and lives must align themselves with the facts because facts are absolutes to be discovered, not declared. Merely hoping or asserting something is good doesn't make it so, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about the whim of a lone subjectivist deciding what is good or bad, the whim of an entire civilization voting on it, or the whim of a "supernatural" mind decreeing it. So the religious who claim to have an absolute morality are really only subjectivists of a supernatural stripe. The trouble for them is that their sort of subjectivism is just as false as any other: God telling Abraham that it is good to slay his innocent son Isaac doesn't make it good. His ordering the enslavement of entire peoples in the Old Testament doesn't make that good.

While Perkins only hints at the full case behind his arguments, he starts down the right track and offers a useful reading list.

There is a point that Perkins doesn't make: D'Souza is psychologizing. He is postulating some psychological rebellion that, in most cases, simply does not exist. (Perkins correctly claims that many atheists resort to the theory of subjectivism, but that's a very different charge.) Thus, D'Souza's argument on this point is not only wrong but ad hominem.

D'Souza on Divine Intervention

Dinesh D'Souza makes two related claims in his latest article. First, even though, as Christopher Hitchens noted, the Judeo-Christian God has been around only for a few thousand years of mankind's existence, this God has been around for 98 percent of the lives of human beings. Second, the fact that people have progressed so much since then only proves that God is real. Here's what D'Souza has to say on this second point:

Suddenly savage man gives way to historical man. Suddenly the naked ape gets his act together. We see civilizations sprouting in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and elsewhere. Suddenly there are wheels and agriculture and art and culture. Soon we have dramatic plays and philosophy and an explosion of inventions and novel forms of government and social organization.

So how did Homo sapiens, heretofore such a slacker, suddenly get so smart? Scholars have made strenuous efforts to account for this but no one has offered a persuasive account. ...

Well, there is one obvious way to account for this historical miracle. It seems as if some transcendent being or force reached down and breathed some kind of a spirit or soul into man, because after accomplishing virtually nothing for 98 percent of our existence, we have in the past 2 percent of human history produced everything from the pyramids to Proust, from Socrates to computer software.

D'Souza's arguments often are hyper-rationalistic, and his latest is no exception. It has no grounding whatsoever in reality, and it ignores obvious conflicting evidence and more plausible explanations.

First, while the Judeo-Christian God is fairly young, that God hardly represented the founding of religion. Instead, primitive superstitions held back mankind for tens of thousands of years. The God of the Jews basically evolved from regional polytheism, then merged with Platonic philosophy to give us Christianity. So far as cultural advances go, D'Souza is crediting the Judeo-Christian God for the hard intellectual work of the Greeks, starting with Thales at about 600 BC.

Second, we do not need any supernatural explanation for the success of mankind. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains that, around 10,000 years ago, people in the Middle East started to domesticate plants and animals in a serious way, which obviously has had a great deal to do with human expansion. As far as the population explosion goes, that didn't happen in a big way until the Industrial Revolution, which was an extension of the Enlightenment, which championed human reason and for the first time since the Christianization of Rome allowed a serious break with religion.

Third, as Greg Perkins explains, even if we didn't know these facts of history, and to the extent that we don't know all of the facts, D'Souza is unjustified in pulling supernaturalism from the hat. Perkins asks, "Since when did not knowing the answer to a puzzle entitle us to go and make one up?"

Fourth, D'Souza misidentifies cause and effect. Is a more sophisticated God the cause of a more sophisticated society, or the consequence of it? Obviously, as people gain the ability to not starve to death, they are able to fund the priestly classes.

What's remarkable to me is how many people seem to find D'Souza's arguments persuasive. The only people such arguments appeal to are detached-from-reality rationalists and those already devoted to their conclusion.

Perkins vs. D'Souza: Gaps

In his third essay criticizing Dinesh D'Souza, Greg Perkins discusses the "God of the gaps."

D'Souza claims that, because science cannot fully explain the history of the universe, the nature of physical laws, and human morality, therefore "the God hypothesis seems unavoidable."

Perkins sensibly replies:

If only his opponents had the philosophical foundation to resist all those temptations for distraction in debate. In response to this sort of thing, they should be asking a simple question to expose a pervasive methodological problem in religious thought: Since when did not knowing the answer to a puzzle entitle us to go and make one up?

In fact, these sorts of arbitrarily asserted "explanations" pulled out of thin air should be simply dismissed out of hand -- a principle long recognized in logic and law. When someone brings a baseless charge before a court, it is to be dismissed as beneath consideration (and could even earn penalties for wasting the court's time). Likewise, when someone brings a baseless idea before a rational mind, it should be simply dismissed as beneath consideration. And D'Souza consistently relies on the logical fallacy of the "argument from ignorance," taking peoples' lack of knowledge around this and that as evidence in support of "the God hypothesis."

Perkins reminds us that various other natural events once were attributed to supernatural forces, including lightning, earthquakes, and disease.

Perkins also notes that D'Souza's appeal to faith rests on the knowledge of science.

After all, you can't wonder about the design of the inner workings of the cell until you find out there are cells and that they contain marvelous machinery, and you can't explore the delicate interplay of cosmological constants until you have discovered those constants in the first place.

Science depends upon our observations of reality governed by natural law. D'Souza pretends that the products of science point to a super-reality governed by God.

Perkins vs. D'Souza: Alleged Harms of Atheism

Greg Perkins is writing a series of essays for NoodleFood criticizing Dinesh D'Souza's Christian apologetics. In his first essay, Perkins refutes D'Souza's claim that atheism is responsible for the horrors of socialism.

Perkins argues:

[A]theism is not itself an ideology; there is no such thing as an "atheist mindset" or an "atheist movement." Atheism per se hasn't inspired and doesn't lead to anything in particular because it is an effect -- not a cause -- and there are countless reasons for a person to not believe in God, ranging from vicious to innocent to noble. ... [W]hat would a committed Communist and an Objectivist have in common -- regarding what they do believe, why they believe it, how that leads them to live personally, the sort of social system they would strive for in government? Nothing. They are polar opposites in principle and practice, across the philosophical board. ...

The important contrast is not atheism vs. religion, but rather rationality vs. irrationality.

Perkins goes on to argue that totalitarian regimes fundamentally reject and drive out rationality.

Perkins relies on the same distinction to undercut D'Souza's claims about the benefits of Christianity:

Besides trying to tar his opponents with the worst atrocities in history, D'Souza regularly tries to give Christianity credit for mankind's positive strides. For instance, he argues in an op-ed that "Christianity has illuminated the greatest achievements of the culture" such as the rise of science, human rights, equality for women and minorities, ending slavery, and so forth. That "when you examine history you find that all of these values came into the world because of Christianity." He contrasts Christianity and atheism, saying that these advances arrived in Christendom and by the hands of Christians -- not atheists. And he uses this to score extra points in debate by asking his opponents what atheism has to offer humanity, other than the chance to undermine all that progress.

Once again, such a comparison is fundamentally confused. Recall that atheism is not itself an ideology and therefore doesn't lead people to do anything in particular -- good or bad. So again we need to approach the issue in terms that will actually shed some light. The illuminating question to consider is: What does reason offer humanity over faith?

Obviously Perkins's essay is not the final word on the matter, but it is an excellent short essay on the subject that merits broad readership. D'Souza has been an effective debater against the "New Atheists," but his positions are fundamentally flawed, and Perkins is going far in pointing this out.

D'Souza on Gay Marriage

Dinesh D'Souza writes the following scary lines in the context of the California gay-marriage decision: "It is the essence of democracy that people should be able to decide the moral rules that govern the nature of a community. If people don't have that power, then they are living under an autocracy."

Taken alone, D'Souza's statement is an endorsement of mob rule. I was therefore relieved, initially, to read his qualifications. "[M]ajority rule... is limited by what the government has the power to do" and "is also circumscribed by individual rights." So far, that's what I believe as well. Where we part ways is in our understanding of individual rights.

While Christians typically argue that our rights come from God, D'Souza here implies that they come from the state. D'Souza refers to "rights clearly specified in the Constitution." He adds, "The state is constitutionally prohibited from undermining these enumerated rights."

This presents a difficulty, because our "enumerated rights" explicitly refer to our non-enumerated ones.

If our only rights are those spelled out in government documents, then our rights are culturally relative. I hold that our rights come not from political caprice or mob rule or God, but from our nature as humans. As Ayn Rand stated it eloquently through John Galt, "The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A -- and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work."

D'Souza presents the following argument against gay marriage:

[J]ust like everyone else, gays do have the right to marry. They have the right to marry adult members of the opposite sex! ...

[S]tates have a legitimate right to define marriage. State legislatures, drawing on tradition and appealing to the values of their constituents, have defined marriage in a very particular way. Marriage requires a) two people who are b) of legal age and c) not closely related to each other who are d) one male and one female. ...

[I]f it's discriminatory to gays to require that marriage be between a man and a woman, why isn't it discriminatory to Mormons and Muslims to require that it remain between two people? Isn't incestuous marriage also between "consenting adults" who have a right to equal protection of the laws? And why doesn't the Fourteenth Amendment protect the fellow who wants to walk down the aisle with his poodle...?

The point is not that gay marriage is indistinguishable from child marriage or polygamy. The point is that any definition, and marriage is no exception, includes some people and excludes others. Consequently it's unreasonable to say that gays have a constitutional right to over-ride the definition but other groups do not.

D'Souza essentially places the "definitions" of our individual rights in the hands of the mob. His argument, for example, also would have supported restrictions on interracial marriage. "Just like everyone else, blacks to have the right to marry. They have the right to marry adult members of the same race!" Society need merely tweak the "definition" of marriage to include "e) of the same race." For "if it's discriminatory to blacks to require that marriage be between people of the same race, why isn't it discriminatory to Mormons..." and so on.

D'Souza's view of socially defined rights meshes with his view of strictly enumerated rights. His argument is that our rights come from the state.

Yet, as Diana Hsieh and I have argued, gay marriage (between two consenting adults) is substantially similar to heterosexual marriage. Hsieh trounces D'Souza's bogus comparisons:

1. Marriage to beasts is impossible, as the marriage relationship requires the capacity for rationality, not to mention a basic equality in rights. ...

2. Marriage to children is excluded for the same basic reason: children are not yet able to fully exercise even the basic rationality required to live independently. That capacity for independence is required for the integration of lives involved in marriage. ...

3. Polygamous marriage is excluded because whatever relationships would result from multiple unions would be fundamentally different than that of a two-person marriage. ...

Our rights do not come from arbitrary (or traditional) social "definitions." Our rights have an objective basis. And it is telling that Christians, who so often claim that our rights come from God, so often fall back on cultural relativism.

D'Souza makes very clear his attitude toward "enumerated rights:" they are subject to social interpretation. He writes, "In the past Democrats have always appreciated courts doing their dirty work when it comes to issues like abortion, pornography, prostitution and gay rights."

To stick with the issue of pornography, what happened to the enumerated right of free speech? This right, according to D'Souza, depends upon social "definitions" of what constitutes pornography, definitions that are culturally relative and that derive from mob rule or arbitrary judicial opinion. (Significantly, in this case the courts have carved out exceptions to free speech.)

If the enumerated right of free speech is subject to social "definitions," then John McCain's campaign censorship law passes muster, because it wound through the Congress, earned the President's signature, and passed through the Supreme Court.

If free speech may be arbitrarily "defined" to exclude pornography, using D'Souza's reasoning, then why can't freedom of religion be "defined" to exclude "dangerous" or even heretical religions?

D'Souza's position collapses to mob rule, the view that "people should be able to decide the moral rules that govern the nature of a community." While limited powers and enumerated rights may check particular reforms, ultimately those powers and rights depend on popular opinion. While generally people do ultimately create the governments under which they live, my point is that individual rights have an objective basis independent of arbitrary social "definitions."

Oddly, D'Souza's logic suggests that, if the majority chose to change the definition of marriage to include gay marriage, he would accept the new rules. Somehow, I doubt other Christians would be happy with that outcome.

D'Souza Versus Rights

Dinesh D'Souza is a cheerleader for religion, and most any religion will do. His favored religion is Christianity, but short of that, he prefers a religious orientation to a secular one. In a recent article, he continues to find common cause with the Blame America First crowd of the radical left, discussing Islamist terrorism not in the context of problems within modern Islam that cause such terrorism, but in the context of alleged American failures.

D'Souza claims that Americans who advocate "the right to blaspheme, the complete exclusion of religious symbols from the public square, the right of teenage boys and girls to receive sex education and contraceptives, the right to abortion, prostitution as a worker's right, pornography as a protected form of expression, gay rights and gay marriage, and so on... are producing a powerful 'blowback' from the House of Islam."

The first thing to notice is that American domestic politics are hardly the legitimate concern of non-American Muslims. I agree with D'Souza that Islamists hate America for its freedoms, but D'Souza is wrong to suggest that any part of the fault lies with America. Certainly we should not alter our domestic policies in a shortsighted attempt to prevent "blowback" from Islamist terrorists.

D'Souza, in criticizing leftists, also packages items that do not fit together logically. I think that people have the right to blaspheme. Women have the right to get an abortion. Consenting adults have the right to trade sex for money (as I've argued,) produce and view pornography, engage in homosexuality, and partner romantically with whom they choose. I do not advocate "the complete exclusion of religious symbols from the public square," but neither do I think that Christian symbols should dominate that square. I think that non-abusive parents have the right to raise their children and to set policies concerning sex education and contraceptives.

What is the alternative to the liberties that I endorse? To blaspheme means "to speak impiously or irreverently of (God or sacred things)." For example, the phrases "God damn it" and "God does not exist" are blasphemous. The alternative to the right to blaspheme is the imposition of legal penalties for blasphemy; for example, some Americans call for the death penalty for blasphemers. The alternative to the right to abortion is the imposition of legal penalties on doctors and women involved with abortion. The alternative to legal prostitution is today's hypocritical prohibition that fosters violence and disease. (However, most American "liberals" do not favor legal prostitution, as D'Souza suggests.) The alternative to legal pornography is censorship. While calls for censorship are in vogue among both the left and the right, they are incompatible with freedom of speech. The alternatives to gay rights and gay unions are legal penalties for homosexuality (in the "House of Islam" homosexuals often are killed) and discriminatory contract law.

In a future article, perhaps D'Souza can explain precisely what legal penalties he believes Americans should adopt against blasphemy, abortion, pornography, and homosexuality. Otherwise, perhaps he can explain why he thinks some such liberties deserve legal protections while others don't.

Does Religion Have Adaptive Value?

Yesterday, I discussed some Christians who claim that evolutionary biology (at least in terms of species evolving into new species) is false. Today, I'll briefly review an article by Dinesh D'Souza that attempts to show that evolutionary theory supports religion ("Desecrating Darwin's Cathedral," January 21, 2008).

D'Souza, who is so confident in his intellectual superiority that that he calls his opponents fools (as well as belligerent militants), quotes an article by David Sloan Wilson to criticize Richard Dawkins:

Wilson examines Dawkins' central claim that religion is an obvious "delusion." On the contrary, Wilson writes, religion is in general more adaptive for human communities than atheism. "On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning, rather than gratifying their impulsive desires...They report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited."

Wilson gives a telling example: The Jains of India seem to have bizarre religious habits. They won't kill any creature, even cockroaches. They sometimes fast virtually unto death. They have been known to refuse contact with non-Jains. The Jains would easily satisfy Dawkins' view of religion as a senseless delusion. And yet Wilson points out that the Jains are basically the Jews of India: they are one of the most successful economic communities in the world. The reason, he suggests, is that religious practices that seem weird and impractical to outsiders actually cultivate deep bonds of trust between Jains. This economic solidarity is crucial for a diaspora trading community that has built economic networks throughout Asia and around the world. What seems like a pointless delusion turns out to be eminently practical. From the evolutionist's perspective--and in terms of the only currency that counts for a biologist--Jain practices have demonstrated "survival value."

Let us first take these claims at face value. D'Souza argues himself into a tight corner. For if religion survives because of its "survival value" for humans, the way that, say, the eyeball survives because of its survival value, then there's no reason to believe that religion is true. The truth of religion is simply beside the point. According to D'Souza's argument, it simply doesn't matter whether God exists, whether Jesus rose from the dead, whether people live beyond the death of the body, etc. Those are not the reasons that cultures actually accept religion, according to this line of thought. Instead, cultures accept religion, regardless of the truth of the claims of religion, because it helps its members to advance their lives and pass on their genes.

But D'Souza argues that, in particular, Christianity is true. I suppose he would counter that all sorts of other reasons (such as the design of the universe) independently prove the truth of religion in general and Christianity in particular. And yet his argument about the evolutionary "survival value" of religion clashes with any such additional claims. As the example of Jainism demonstrates, the alleged "survival value" of religion has nothing to do with the truth of particular claims of any specific religion. Instead, the "survival value" of religion has everything to do with the particular culture in which it arises. D'Souza's argument cannot ultimately endorse Christianity; at most, it can endorse adopting the most successful religion in one's culture. D'Souza's argument is thus essentially one of cultural relativism.

By accepting the claim that beliefs, as well as biological traits, are subject to the evolutionary process, D'Souza cuts religion off from truth in another way. Human volition implies that people can accept ideas, true or false, helpful or harmful, based on whether and how they apply reason to the facts of reality. But the claim that beliefs, including religion beliefs, are merely a product of evolution comparable to the evolution of biological traits, implies that beliefs as such are a matter of convenience, not a matter of truth, and that one has no inherent connection with the other. D'Souza's article thus reveals a deep strain of pragmatism, in which "truth" is not a matter of objective assessment but of workability, again subject to the variances of time and place. While some Christians argue against biological evolution on the grounds that blind chance cannot produce order, D'Souza implies that religious beliefs too are the product of blind chance. The reason that we have an eyeball is that it works. Likewise, the reason that we have religion is that it works, and nothing more needs to be said about it. It arises in an essentially deterministic universe.

D'Souza contradicts himself in another way. He constantly berates and mocks atheists for criticizing Christianity. He says that, if atheists really didn't believe in God, then they wouldn't write books condemning religion, just as we don't write books condemning unicorns. But if D'Souza really believes that religion has "survival value," then why does he write books and articles condemning atheists and proclaiming them fools? Biologists don't condemn maladaptive mutations; they just explain how they work. Why does D'Souza rush to point out the inferiority of atheists, if their beliefs are analogous to a maladaptive mutation? Why does he care about the particular beliefs of any given individual, when evolution will win out? Perhaps the answer is that the One True Religion (i.e., Christianity) is destined to win out, and D'Souza is an instrument in God's evolutionary plan.

However, the entire enterprise of interpreting beliefs from the framework of evolutionary biology is basically on the wrong track. Some of the analogies are interesting, such as the idea of a "meme," if limited in scope. And of course there is an important sense in which ideas "evolve," in that people teach ideas to others, who then often adapt the ideas. So too is there a feedback mechanism: ideas matter, and acting on different ideas will lead to different consequences. Beyond that the analogy breaks down. The point of evolutionary biology is that chance mutations either help or hurt the organism; the process is not guided by any intelligence. But ideas are the product of intelligence.

The practice of starving yourself to death is the product not of an "adaptive" belief but of a stupid one. Moreover, the practice is immoral, and it impedes, rather than advances, the interests of the Jains. If we're going to talk about the Jains, why don't we talk about the caste system in India, or the religious monarchies of ancient Egypt, or the primitive tribal religions, or the Islamic totalitarians? Adaptive, all?

Statistical surveys about the quality of lives of religious believers in the modern West say nothing about the truth or benefits of the religious beliefs (even ignoring possible methodological flaws of such surveys). American Christians are substantially secular, and their traditions generally include the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which glorify life on earth and the pursuit of earthly happiness. Moreover, many self-proclaimed atheists are taken with other false beliefs, such as those by Kant, Marx, Freud, and Derrida -- beliefs that promote subjectivism and ultimately nihilism. I do not doubt that many Christians are happier than many Marxists, Freudians, and moral subjectivists. And that says exactly nothing about whether Christianity is true.