Susan Wilkins

Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? We consider this problem for beliefs in three different domains: religion, morality, and commonsense and scientific claims about matters of empirical fact. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. One reply is that evolution can be expected to design systems that produce true beliefs in some domain. This reply works for commonsense beliefs and can be extended to scientific beliefs. But it does not work for moral or religious beliefs. An alternative reply which has been used defend moral beliefs is that their truth does not consist in their tracking some external state of affairs. Whether or not it is successful in the case of moral beliefs, this reply is less plausible for religious beliefs. So religious beliefs emerge as particularly vulnerable to evolutionary debunking.

The materiality of Assisi's early trecento Noli me tangere fresco in the lower basilica's Magdalen Chapel warrants reconsideration. In this painting, of the Magdalen reaching toward the resurrected Christ, the artist gilded the faces of the witnessing angels on Christ's tomb and, more importantly, rendered them in relief. They thus confront the worshipper in three dimensions, literally depicting Matthew's description of the angel at the tomb, whose "countenance was as lightning" (Mt 28, 3). These relief faces are unique in fresco, and their significance is best understood in relation to other near-contemporary mixed-media renderings, particularly in panel paintings featuring figural relief, such as the Chiarito Tabernacle (1340s), and the late-thirteenth century Santa Maria Maggiore Madonna Altarpiece. Such sculpted painting, whether on panels or on walls, materially manifested the divine to worshippers through the sense of corporeal presence imparted by the use of relief in combination with painted imagery.