Darwin's Contemplative Vision

The Darwin fish has become a potent and provocative symbol of the tensions and cross-currents in contemporary discourse about evolution, creationism, and intelligent design. Usually displayed as a bumper sticker or a small silver icon, it plays on the meaning of the ancient Christian Icthus symbol by placing Darwin’s name in the body of the fish. As with all such symbols, its meaning defies easy explanation. However, it is not difficult to discern at least one of its meanings: evolution trumps creation. In other words, there is a different and more compelling explanation of how life came into being than the one offered by the belief system underlying the traditional Icthus. (Tom Lessl at the University of Georgia, who has done an extensive survey of those who display this symbol on their cars, argues that such display often amounts to an “act of ritual aggression”). Nor, in the bitter and divisive climate of today’s debates about evolution and creation, is it possible any longer to look innocently upon the Icthus symbol itself. It has now come to stand as the ultimate ‘anti-Darwin’ icon, a rebuke of atheistic, evolutionary thought. The power of these symbols owes much to the stridency with which the ideas of both evolution and creation are promoted by their respective supporters. The entire issue, at least within contemporary political-cultural debate, has become utterly polarized: one is either for God or for evolution (and Darwin).