Ruse was born in
Birmingham, England, attending
Bootham School, York. He received an undergraduate degree from the
University of Bristol (1962), his master's degree at
McMaster University,
Hamilton, Ontario (1964), and a
Ph.D. from the University of Bristol (1970). Ruse taught at the
University of Guelph in
Ontario, Canada for 35 years. Since his retirement from Guelph, he had taught at
Florida State University and was the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy (2000–20??). In 1986, he was elected as a Fellow of both the
Royal Society of Canada and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received honorary doctorates from the
University of Bergen, Norway (1990),
McMaster University, Ontario, Canada (2003) and the
University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada (2007). In September 2014 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by University College London. Ruse was a key witness for the
plaintiff in the 1981 test case (
McLean v. Arkansas) of the state law permitting the teaching of "
creation science" in the
Arkansas school system. The federal judge ruled that the state law was
unconstitutional. His 1996 book on
the idea of progress in biology (orthogenesis),
Monad to Man, had a mixed reception from other philosophers of biology.
Peter J. Bowler described it as an important and controversial book on the status of evolutionism. Ron Amundson called Ruse an analytic and empiricist philosopher, but found Ruse's handling of
structuralism "less satisfactory" than of the
adaptationist, Darwinian traditions. Ruse delivered some of the 2001
Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the
University of Glasgow. His lectures on Evolutionary Naturalism, "A Darwinian Understanding of Epistemology" and "A Darwinian Understanding of Ethics," are collected in
The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding (ed. Anthony Sanford, T & T Clark, 2003). Ruse debated regularly with
William A. Dembski, a proponent of
intelligent design. Ruse takes the position that it is possible to reconcile the Christian faith with evolutionary theory. Ruse founded the journal
Biology and Philosophy, of which he was emeritus Editor, and had published numerous books and articles. He cited the influence of his late colleague
Ernan McMullin. From 2013, Ruse was listed on the Advisory Council of the
National Center for Science Education. In 2014, Ruse was named the
Bertrand Russell Society's award winner for his dedication to science and reason. Ruse sought to reconcile science and religion, a position which brought him into conflict with
Richard Dawkins and
Pharyngula science blogger PZ Myers. Ruse had engaged in heated exchanges with
new atheists. According to Ruse in 2009, "Richard Dawkins, in his best selling
The God Delusion, likens me to
Neville Chamberlain, the pusillanimous appeaser of Hitler at Munich.
Jerry Coyne reviewed one of my books (Can a Darwinian be a Christian?) using the Orwellian quote that only an intellectual could believe the nonsense I believe in. And non-stop blogger
P. Z. Myers has referred to me as a 'clueless gobshite.'" Ruse said new atheists do the side of science a "grave disservice", a "disservice to scholarship", and that "Dawkins in
The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course", and that
The God Delusion makes him "ashamed to be an atheist". Ruse concluded, saying "I am proud to be the focus of the invective of the new atheists. They are a bloody disaster". ==Personal life and death==