The Darwinian Conservatism of Transcendent Morality: A Reply to Bob Cheeks

Bob Cheekshas written a review of Darwinian Conservatismfor the IntellectualConservative.com website. He begins:

"Dr. Larry Arnhart, professor of political science at Northern Illinois University, is on a mission to save conservatives from the curse of ignorance that afflicts those who have adamantly refused to yield to the revealed wisdom of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It is Arnhart's salvific purpose then to act as a modern John the Baptist and proclaim the inerrancy of 'Darwinian conservatism' that will allow conservatives to embrace 'modern science' and not be mocked as Luddites, and (God forbid)fundamentalists."

Hey, I think he's being sarcastic!

Cheeks goes on to make the criticism that I would expect from many conservatives--that a Darwinian science of human nature cannot be truly conservative because it denies the "transcendent moral worldview" that supports conservative moraltiy and politics. He refers to Thomas Aquinas and Richard Weaver as affirming this "higher, transcendent morality" of conservatism.

But if Aquinas was right to defend a "natural law" as rooted in the "instincts" or "natural inclinations" of human beings, and if he was right to distinguish this "natural law" from the "divine law" of Revelation, then why shouldn't a Darwinian biological science of human nature help us to understand that natural moral law?

After all, Darwin believed that the enduring principles of traditional morality were ultimately rooted in a natural "moral sense" of the human animal. Darwin also saw that this traditional morality was often supported by religious beliefs.

As I indicate in my book, conservatives like Edmund Burke have insisted that "religion is the basis of civil society," and that "man is by his constitution a religious animal." But as is clear from Burke's praise for ancient Greek and Roman religions, he affirms the practical truth of religion without presuming to decide the theological truth of any particular religious tradition. Isn't that the proper attitude towards religion for the conservative?

Weaver argued that every healthy culture rests on a "myth" that is a product of the human "imagination." The traditional "image" of man as created in God's image is an example of such a "myth." But the truth of this "myth" is poetic rather than factual, and its practical truth comes from is success in sustaining the traditional order of a culture.

The Darwinian explanation of religion as a means by which human beings bind themselves into cooperative communities would seem to be perfectly consistent with the conservative stance of Burke and Weaver. From this perspective, the Darwinian conservative can affirm the practical utility of any religious tradition that sustains the good order of civil society.

Does Cheeks disagree with this? Does he think that to be a conservative one must affirm the doctrinal truths of Christianity? Can Catholic conservatives and Protestant conservatives agree on these doctrinal truths? Does this exclude Jewish conservatives? Muslims? Presumably, it would exclude skeptics and atheists. If so, then skeptical conservatives like Michael Oakeshott and Friedrich Hayek are not really conservatives.

Wouldn't it be more sensible to say that conservatives must respect the practical truth of any religion that supports social order, regardless of whether we can agree on the metaphysical truth of that religion?