Blair Dee Hodges Second Short Essay March 22, 2012 Nadia Yassines Intellectual Anti-Intellectualism on Darwin In chapter

1.3, The Souls Ruin, Nadia Yassine tackles the subject of Darwinism as modern mans new religion (35).1In her typically-snarky prose, Yassine describes Charles Darwin inventing the myth of the Superfish, and discusses some of her perceived cultural outcomes of the spread of Darwins theory of evolution. As Ronald L. Numbers, a distinguished historian of the history of science and religion, has observed, The greatest myth in the history of science and religion holds that they have been in a state of constant conflict.2 Yassines chapter on Darwinism, the west and Christianity has interesting parallels to Western writers who have propounded a similar thesis for differing reasons. In this paper I will highlight several of these parallels as I analyze and suggest a few correctives to Yassines chapter on Darwinism. I. Metadiscussion of Rhetoric and Tone Full Sails Ahead presents Yassines engagement with her understanding of modernity, the west, science, globalization, communications, religion, and other similar subjects. Throughout her text she spends a good deal of time in metadiscussion regarding the state and nature of various intellectual and political controversies. For instance, in her preface she refers to books written by her father with the intent of taming and winning modernity for islam. She reports her fathers work was received by many as an insult to modernity, some people indulged in childish polemics. Annoyed by Western
1

All parenthetical page citations in the body of this paper refer to Nadia Yassine, Full Sails Ahead (Iowa City: Justice and Spirituality Publishing, 2006). 2 Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths About Science and Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1.

condescendence, Yassine calls for a more productive and respectful exchange of ideas (xvi, see also 76, 91, 97 among many other examples of such metadiscussion). She promises a journey against one-sided views and small-minded notions (3). When the stakes are high, Yassine uses an epigraph to suggest a certain ethic of dialog: To comprehend the Other you must not commandeer him but rather become his guest Louise Massignon (91). Such an approach seems to concern her most when the subject being studied is Islam. In fact, she specifically observes: Finicky academism is sent to the devil when Islam is the subject of study (130). Considering such professed ideals, the reader might expect a careful and balanced overview of the subjects Yassine treats. When it comes to Darwinism, however, all bets are off. Rather than taking Darwinism seriously from the outset she insults Darwin by complimenting his ability to convince people that the fables he created were true and scientific (35). She includes a silly poem about Mr. Fish with legs, tired of his pond, and calls Darwinism a poisonous philosophy and a pseudoscience founded on a bestial premise, and says only modern idiocy could swallow such a bitter harvest (36-7). It makes for fun reading, but as the old saying goes, it tends to generate much more heat than light. II. What has Islam to do with Fundamentalist Christianity? Every God-given day, Yassine asserts, honest men of science disprove the deception and revile the fraud of Darwinian verbiage[?] in vain! Others not short of competence and valid arguments have refuted Darwin (37). But finicky academism is sent to the devil here, it seems, as she doesnt bother to cite a single one of these honest men of science who daily disprove Darwins grinning-monkey theory. In fact, Yassine

decides to forgo getting bogged down in the murky swamp (soup?) of scientific research and studies. Instead, We will content ourselves here with observing Darwinism from the cultural anglethe only one of interest to us, anyway, since even the exact sciences are culturally based (37). This is an intriguing rhetorical move, especially considering how it parallels religious responses to Darwinism in the West. Ill describe some of these responses and compare them to Yassines attempt to shift to cultural questions. Young Earth Creationism developed in the early decades of the 1900s as an attempt to counter Darwinism. Hydraulics engineer Henry Morris tried to prove the viability of a literal global flood.3 Various attempts to initiate academic research institutions failed as scientists grew to believe the research was entirely flawed. But anti-evolutionism did not go away, it became more widespread particularly among evangelical Fundamentalists even as it became academically disrespectable. 4 As two evangelical Christian scholars explain: Creationisms popular appeal derived largely from a powerful social argument, namely, that Americas worrisome slide into immorality, liberalism, and unbelief was caused by the widespread acceptance of evolution and its pernicious influence in areas like education, law, sexual mores, politics, and so on.5 Everything from hippies to drug use to rock music and disobedience to parents could be chalked up to the natural outcome of teaching children they ascended from apes. Simplistic notions of survival of the fittest, social Darwinism not crafted by Darwin himself and largely abandoned in the academy today, would explain evil in the world.
3

Randall J. Stephens, Karl W. Giberson, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard, 2012), 31-2. 4 Yassine attributes the initial Fundamentals publication to William Jennings Bryans article of 1923. The Fundamentals were actually a series of pamphlets first published in 1909. The initial publications did not reject evolution outright, although the author felt repugnance to the idea of having an ape as ancestor. Still, he would accept the humiliating fact, if proved. See Stephens, Giberson, 46. 5 Stephens, Giberson, 35.

It is fascinating to note that Yassines cultural arguments dont follow this exact path, but rather focus on the weakness of Catholicism and Christianity in general in the face of Darwinism. If anything, Christianity set the stage for the acceptance of Darwinism in Yassines view. An unnatural vexation intrinsic to its precepts gradually wore away at the faith until Darwinism takes its place in the onslaught against a suffocating and hypocritical church (38-9). Fundamentalists tied their faith to a Bible fraught with nonsense, with outdated stories of origin, global floods, and other scientific embarrassments are forced to perform mental gymnastics to try and salvage things (41). According to Yassines story, dogmatic atheistic Darwinists on one side are pitted against religious fools clinging to their silly book, soon to give way completely to an atheistic doom. Thus, some evangelical critics thus employ Darwinism as evidence of wider cultural decadence; their Christian faith standing as the true bulwark against it. Yassine employs Darwinism as evidence of the weaknesses of Christianity and the pathetic capitulation on the part of some Christians who are compelled to act academically respectable even while clinging to an outdated and flawed Bible, or simply abandoning the Bible to its fate by making a pact with the devil (45). This is a stark either/or proposition, and one which she would ostensibly apply to Islam: Darwin or Allah, she might offer as the only possible choices. It is strange to see her simultaneously dismissing Fundamentalist Christians while using some of the same rhetorical techniques. Missing in Yassines critique are all of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims who profess faith in their God as well as respect for and interest in Darwinian evolution. Missing are the ongoing discussions attempting to reconcile faith and scientific outlooks on

the origin of the human species. Yassine seems to anticipate such objections. Her introduction explains, I must point out that this book has no academic pretensionsIt is no more and no less than a passionate invitation to a voyage toward meaning (4). She repeats this important point toward her conclusion while glossing over some historical ambiguities: Since the aim of this book is to refute certain received ideas that pass islam off as unspeakable obscurantismand not to compose an academic treatisewe will not go into detail (166). III. Intellectual Anti-Intellectualism My precise objective is to destroy the barriers that stand between this person and his primordial right to know the secret of his existence by recognizing God, Yassine reports (4). She sees in Darwin an uncompromising dogmatism which eliminates God and confines the known world to the observed. In the past, such views were thought to be peculiarly American. Stephen J. Gould, a controversial paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, historian of science (whom Yassine actually quotes!) reported: as insidious as [evolution denial] is, at least its not a worldwide movementI hope everyone realizes the extent to which this is a local, indigenous, American bizarrity.6 But Gould was wrong, as Yassines work suggests. In the 1980s a Muslim minister of education in Turkey contacted a Fundamentalist Christian group in the United States requesting anti-evolution literature which was subsequently translated into Turkish. An imam named Harun Yahya in Istanbul has produced nearly 200 books in languages ranging from Arabic to Urdu claiming that evolution denies the existence of Allah, destroys moral values, and promotes naturalism,
6

Ronald L. Numbers, Myth 24: That Creationism is a Uniquely American Phenomenon, in Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths About Science and Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 215.

the same claims of the Fundamentalist Christians and Yassine. Like these authors, Yassine produces works with the trappings of scholarship (footnotes, bibliography, citations) but presents an essentially anti-intellectual argument against evolution.7 Each chapter begins with a series of epigrams which seem to anticipate the sort of arguments Yassine will make throughout the chapter. At the outset of the chapter on Darwin she includes: Just as a heap of stones is not a house, so the accumulation of facts is not science. Yassine mistakenly attributes this quote to Raymond Poincar, who served as President of France from 1913 to 1920. Raymonds cousin, Henri Poincare, published these words in a 1908 book called La Science et lHypothese.8 Henri was a brilliant mathematics theorist who helped develop the nascent ideas of relativity theory. Henri did not engage specifically in discussions surrounding Darwinism. He was focused on physics and mathematics and resisted the idea that mathematics could lie at the root of all known phenomena. In fact, his work has been reflected upon more recently as an important predecessor of chaos theory.9 This is the context in which Henri wrote his statement, intended to discourage simplistic conclusions from gathered evidence. Yassine does not refer directly to the quote in the body of her text, but it seems she uses it to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. This is most evident at the conclusion of the chapter when she obliquely refers to Karl Popper and others who argued against certain Baconian inductive models of scientific research, whose philosophical reflections themselves have since been largely surpassed by newer theories (45-6). In fact, she sounds strangely neo-Darwinian herself when she discusses Islam and modernity later in the book. She dismisses simplistic evolutionary
7 8

Stephens, Giberson, 222. See http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11625&page=26. 9 See http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9

sociological views which paint a picture of humanitys march of progress toward a better and better future. To think that history is linear is as ridiculous as believing that the earth is flat. Any historical event is born within a context of breaks, contradictions, oppositions, and dominations (143). Oddly, she sounds downright neo-Darwinistic!10 Although Yassine asserts she does not wish to reject modernity, only to dialog with it with criticism and positive participation she provides instead a polemical avoidance of serious scrutiny regarding Darwins legacy (85). Perhaps this is to be expected from a creative and bold writer who proclaims: I know that in a world where the image reigns, being provocative is the only way to hold peoples attention (1).

10

For a more rigorous, though equally rhetorically engaging, perspective on this point, and on Darwins work as construed by more recent theorists, scientists, and theists more broadly, see Conor Cunningham, Darwins Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011).