Evolution debate

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Cartoon: Bill McArthur 

I am grateful to the Rev Graham Hellier (October edition) for his helpful contribution to the discussion.

Graham and I are in agreement that there is a deep mystery in the universe and in life that points to the mind of God. However, there are two main questions upon which we differ.

Firstly: is evolution a threat to Christian faith? Graham thinks not. And in this he is in the good company of, for example, Francis Collins who led the human genome project and sees no conflict between evolution and Christianity. Now, like Graham, Collins may believe that God occasionally intervened in the otherwise naturalistic evolutionary process to introduce the ‘right’ mutations at the right time – but in undetectable ways. The problem, however, is that the majority of leading evolutionary scientists claim instead that the whole point about Darwin’s theory of natural selection is that it provides a purely naturalistic account of the origin of species.

Secondly, can the Darwinian mechanism account for all of life’s complexity? Is the science correct? The history of science shows that it has often got things wrong. The key point about the ‘insider’ evolutionary biologist Gerd Müller is that no one goes looking for a new theory if the current one is just fine (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!). Müller and colleagues have admitted that – contrary to what we’ve all been led to believe – mutations (the random element) filtered by natural selection (the non-random element) together do not have the power to ‘create’ novel biology.

The so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis” (the new theory) is an attempt to fill in the huge ‘hole in the road’ left by ineffectual natural selection. They are seeking other purely natural processes which they hope will be capable of explaining life’s complexity, such as self-organisation, self-assembly, evo-devo and the like – none of which look promising. If there is no mechanism, there is no naturalistic story. It is difficult to overstate the significance of this admission.

So I would flip Graham’s coin over and suggest that hitching our theological wagon to a potentially failing science may end in regret. Guy Douglas, South Queensferry.