FOOD FOR THOUGHT: ARE HUMANS 'JUST ANOTHER FORM OF TEMPORARILY ANIMATED MEAT?'

David Quammen, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (Great Discoveries) (New York & London: Atlas Books/ W.W. Norton, 2006) ("Along the way. Darwin makes the statements such as 'I think it highly probable that' and 'I am convinced that,' buttressing the evidence with his own amiable persona as a fair-minded English gentleman to suggest that these conclusions can probably be taken as right." "This is a point with some relevance, in our own time, to the conflict between evolutionism and creationism. It's an arid truth, but one that the defenders of evolutionary theory (and the teaching of it in public schools) against religion-based political challenges would do well to remember. The complexities of epistemology, as well as those of biology, shouldn't get lost in the arguing. No, you can't prove that all species have evolved from common ancestral lines, with natural selection as a major driving mechanism, and Charles Darwin himself didn't claim that you could. It's just very, very probable that this explanation of the living world is correct, based on the evidence Darwin mustered and all that's been added since. The alternative explanations are either less probable within the realm of physical cause and effect, or else they're  scientifically meaninglss (because untestable against negative data) expression of religious beliefs." Id. at 200-201. "Scientific insight and religious dogma had never come more directly into conflict. It was a bigger issue than whether humans and monkeys share a common ancestry. It was the issue of whether humans and monkeys, along with lobsters and dandelions and all other living creatures, share an absence of special divine appointment. In plain language: a soul or no soul? An afterlife or not? Are humans spiritually immortal in a way that chickens and cows aren't, or just another form of temporarily animated meat?" "Today we tend to overlook this horrible challenge implied by Darwin's idea. Theistic evolution has supposedly made the theory safe for people of all faiths. But the deep materialism of Darwin's vision could't so easily be overlooked back when natural selection was a shocking novelty. It assaulted sensibilities. It impeded uptake." Id. at 210.).