Faith & Darwinism

I posted about this idea awhile back when my thoughts were even murkier than usual, and now I'm removing what I wrote and posting this over it. I make no representations about the historicity of this blog and nobody's reading anyway, so why not exert a little quality control?

So, initially I was sparked to post by one of those shower stall epiphanies I have referred to before, which though perhaps not always deserving to be called epiphanies I do guarantee to happen in the shower. The spark was appreciating all of a sudden an ironic paradox to do with the beliefs of the American religious arch-right, at least such as I conceive that set of beliefs in a nut shell.

Here it is: On the one hand, these arch-conservatives believe that God created all living things as we see them today in an instant and Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection is preposterous on its face. On the other, they believe that it is through centuries of free-market competition that the West steadily has progressed toward the greatest technological and social sophistication achieved since Adam and Eve fled the Garden of Eden. On that basis they say no to quotas, not to subsidies and no to protectionism. All that is truly meant to be, they say, is a product of competition.

Paradoxical that these Social Darwinists do not believe in Darwin.