How to Get Past the ‘Science vs. Religion’ Binary

Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply about the Meaning of Our Existence, by Samuel T. Wilkinson (Simon and Schuster, 352 pages, $29.95)

I n the early years of the 21st century, some public intellectuals dubbing themselves “New Atheists” began aggressively evangelizing the idea that religious belief is not only delusional but also destructive:“Religion poisons everything.” Unfortunately, the American public listened, and in the past two decades church attendance, religious affiliation, and belief in God have all substantially decreased even as depression, addiction, anxiety, suicide, and despair have substantially increased (especially among the most secular demographics). This religious decline has not only resulted in American misery but also created a cultural vacuum filled by a woke political ideology that threatens our most basic freedoms.

Since intellectuals were in the forefront of this unfortunate secularizing trend, intellectuals will need to play a leading role in its reversal. Sam Wilkinson, a psychiatry professor at Yale, has taken up this task in his new book, Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply about the Meaning of Our Existence. Whereas the New Atheists keep parroting the old (and discredited) idea that there is “warfare” between science and religion, Wilkinson makes a compelling case that not only is religion compatible with science but that recent scientific findings support common religious claims.

He doesn’t engage in the futile strategy of pitting evolution against religion, or even the defensive strategy of claiming that evolution can be reconciled with religion; rather, he goes on the offensive, arguing that a proper understanding of evolutionary science has profound religious implications. Evolution shows not only that there is a God, but that God has a purpose for our lives. He arrives at this conclusion through three propositions that form the guiding structure of the book.

First, he says, the latest scientific evidence indicates that evolution is not random. Throughout nature we find examples of “convergent evolution” — the same biological features emerging in many different species and many different environments, revealing “boundary conditions” that guide and shape evolution. There are many evolutionary paths to a common destination, and this is something we wouldn’t see if evolution were entirely random. According to Wilkinson, these boundary conditions are to evolution what a mold is to plastic: At the microscopic level, the movement of molecules in liquid plastic looks random and haphazard, but at a higher level we can see a designed structure (the mold) determining the shape the plastic will take.

Wilkinson’s approach rises above the fruitless “evolution vs. God” debate that has been going on since the time of Darwin. If humans are created in God’s image and if humans create through evolutionary processes (which we clearly do — just look at the changes over time in any human artifact, from eating utensils to smartphones), then why wouldn’t God also use evolutionary processes in biological creation?

After establishing that evolution is not random, Wilkinson moves on to his second proposition: Humans have “dual potentiality.” Even as many of us have grown weary of the “Evolution or God?” debate, many of us have grown weary as well of the debate “Are humans fundamentally good (Rousseau)? Or evil (Hobbes)?” The answer in both cases is “yes.” Wilkinson explores in great detail the ways in which evolution has wired us for both altruism and selfishness, cooperation and aggression, love and lust. Humans are naturally given both to prosocial and to antisocial behaviors. We are at once the most aggressive and the most cooperative species in all of nature.

Third, and finally, Wilkinson argues that humans have free will. While we all have inclinations to antisocial behavior, it’s possible for us to deny our selfish impulses. His evidence for this is more than just philosophical: Quantum physics, biological research, and everyday experience show that reality is indeterminate at a fundamental level (there are “alternative possibilities”), and recent psychological research has shown that mental states have a causative effect on material outcomes (humans have “causal mental control”). Putting these together reveals that humans are not so much fundamentally good or evil as they are fundamentally free.

From these three propositions, Wilkinson derives the following conclusion: There is a purpose to human existence, and this purpose is for humans to choose good over evil. That might sound cliché coming from a pop psychologist or life coach, but, according to Wilkinson, it comes from evolutionary biology.

So how do we best choose good over evil such that it maximizes our personal growth? In his final chapters, he argues that family is the key — husband, wife, and children. The good and happy life is defined by relationships, and family relationships are directly delivered to us by evolution to further our happiness.

Having explained what biology tells us about the good life, Wilkinson finishes by explaining what biology tells us about the good society. His surprising claim is that the key to the good society can be summarized in one word: fatherhood. He notes that most of the major social pathologies — crime, poverty, lack of opportunity, etc. — have their roots in fatherlessness, not only because children who grow up without a father are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviors, but also because marriage and children tame the antisocial tendencies of adult males as well. If social science tells us anything, it’s that men are far more given to criminal behavior than women are — the prison population is over 90 percent male. Reducing male selfishness, aggression, and lust is perhaps the single best way to improve society — marriage and fatherhood accomplish this.

Although Wilkinson’s ideas about evolution, God, and the good life are convincing, they are limited by his failure to properly tie them together. In the early chapters, he connects evolution to God, and in the later chapters he connects evolution to the good society, but he doesn’t adequately connect God to the good society. This is a crucial omission, as it leads him to understate his case. Why has America become so miserable during the New Atheist heyday of the past 20 years? Likely because religious belief and the prosocial family relationships that underlie the good society are deeply intertwined such that a decline in religious belief means societal decline generally. The religious are far more pro-family and prosocial than the unreligious, while religious men in particular are far more likely to be married, have children, and be faithful in those relationships. George Washington was right: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” America has learned this lesson the hard way over the past two decades, and Wilkinson could have bolstered his argument by explicitly pointing to the essential connection between religion and the good society.

Contra the New Atheists’ claim that “religion poisons everything,” the preponderance of scholarly evidence shows that a religious life is a better life and a religious society is a better society. Atheists resort to anecdotal evidence about the evils of religion (“the Crusades!” “9/11!”) because anecdote is all they have. Christopher Hitchens famously argued that “God is not great,” but he might as well have argued that “exercise is not great” because the evidence for each thesis is the same. The reality is that religion is both “truthful” (belief in God is valid) and “useful” (religion is good for society), and Sam Wilkinson has added an important volume to the literature refuting the destructive delusions of the New Atheists.