Why evolution is a religion

"They have taken my theory and turned it into a religion" Charles Darwin. Of course Darwin was no zealous Christian preacher, but he was no atheist either. It is not difficult to explain why. He trained as a Christian minister before embarking in his voyage round the world. He was careful to state his theory as just that, a theory, not an all embracing metanarrative that explains the whole of our existence. And he was very conscious of the gaps in his theory, which he knew there were at that stage. Some of the gaps have been closed. The germ line, finally proved in the early 20th century and the discovery of the genetic code by Crick and Watson lent great support to his theory as a demonstrable process today. But no scientist has seen evolution actually happen. We have witnessed for the last 150 years the present process of natural selection, which no-one denies. Of course we can now see the changes in gene frequencies as resistance to antibiotics spreads. But even the classic cases of change frequencies - of melanic forms of the peppered moth or the genes which express sickle cell anaemia, are not evidence for evolution by natural selection over time scales which are 1 million times greater. We have simply not observed evolution by natural selection in operation. It is one thing to observe natural selection over the last 150 years. It is another to prove that it is the most dominant factor in the survival of species over a billion years. Many Christians, me included, believe in an old earth. Many Christians can accept what science clearly shows, changes in species, even speciation events in plants that can be observed today. But no single animal speciation event has been observed. We can piece together the probable proliferation of different species using island biogeography. We can extrapolate (always a dangerous practice) from our observations over that last 150 years back into the last 150 million years. But we should be cautious. There are simply too many questions that remain.

Dawkins would have us believe that "Natural Selection by means of Natural Selection, or the Differential Survival of Favoured Races" to give Darwin's theory its full title, is about as much in doubt as "the earth going around the sun". But most theories are just current theories until the better theory comes along. And eminent scientists, that Dawkins treats with little respect, like the late Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist (with a palaeontological expertise once at Harvard), disagrees with his certainties. Gould has published many books which suggest that natural selection may indeed be quite irrelevant in the history of evolution. It may be a great mechanism for the proliferation of species, but may simply be too slow, too powerless to account for the explosion of forms of life at different points in the fossil record. For example the cambrian explosion, which he expounds in his book "Wonderful Life" simply cannot be explained according to the gradual evolution which Darwin propounded. Dawkins gives Gould no credence at all.

Not because he is not an evolutionary biologist, nor because he is not an atheist but because he is not an atheistic fundamentalist, because he quite rightly separates questions of the existence of God from science. Gould knows that the fossil record is simply more complex and does not support Darwins theory neary as clearly as Dawkins might hope. So Gould proposed a theory - called punctuated equilibria. He proposed that throughout the history of life on earth there have been cataclysms that have had far greater impact in the survival of different species than has Darwins natural selection. And over long time scales, natural selection may be quite irrelevant to which species survive. In historical terms, it may be the case that people who are good at fighting might be the best able to survive, but that makes little difference when a nuclear bomb goes off.

For example, the Dinosaurs are thought to have been decimated at the K/T boundary by some cataclysmic event, most likely an asteroid. Now it doesn't really matter how well adapted you are as a dinosaur to eat your competitors or reproduce, if an asteroid lands on your head. And Gould, an evolutionist, an atheist, does not think Darwin's theory explains everything, even in the evolution. We can imagine how floods, ice ages, volcanic eruptions, changes in sea level or climate, may well have been more significant over long time scales, than natural selection. This is not to propose a God of the gaps. But just that the shape of life on earth may not be solely due to a process which is "red in tooth and claw".

But to Dawkins this all sounds too religious - floods and earthquakes and volcanoes being more significant in the history of life than the slow gradual changes that Darwin postulated. So why does Dawkins think Darwins theory can explain everything, from stars to music, from beautiful art to why we love each other? Even when there are credible scientists who have no theistic axe to grind, who disagree? Why has he made evolution into his religion, his metanarrative (and surely the selfish gene in which he proposes that the cross of Christ is somehow explicable in evolutionary terms) when it can barely be proven that it explains the fossil record? Why does the fossil record have so few intermediate forms, when Darwin acknowledged that his theory must predict thousands of intermediate forms? We have at best, 3 or 4 out of millions of fossils? Darwins theory predicted there would be many, many clearly intermediate forms, yet when we find fossils they all fit into existing families? This is clear evidence that over long time scales evolution by natural selection cannot explain the evidence.

Dawkins and others who would want us to believe that evolution as fact disproves God has wedded this particular theory to a view of the universe where nothing intervenes to alter the course of history from outside. So asteroids are embarrassing, as are floods and anything that challenges his dogmatic belief that we live in a universe where there is only "blind pitiless indifference". Now that seems going a bit far doesn't it? To safeguard science from the God hypothesis Dawkins denies any appearance, even if recognised by a fellow atheist, of intervention. Anything that could be interpreted as divine, anything that alters the course of evolutionary history that is not gradual and Darwinian. Even if it takes the fossil evidence seriously, even if it acknowledges that natural selection has a part (if not the main part) in evolution, because his dogma is challenged, it must be wrong. Does this appear to you to be an open and scientific mind?

Of course Dakwins claims to follow in the footsteps of the prophet Darwin. But could we ever find on Dawkins lips what Darwin bemoaned: "They have taken my theory and turned it into a religion?". Theories are just that, theories. They are a shaky foundation to begin a religion, a metanarrative.