Of all the topics that I write on, the one that arouses most reaction is evolution. Some people find the concept deeply disturbing. At the heart of this disturbance is the fear that, if evolution is true, everything in the world is devoid of higher meaning.
That scenario is simply too bleak and barren for many people to accept and, consequently, they are bitterly opposed to the theory. But there is no need to take this pessimistic black-and-white approach.
Darwin's and Wallace's (1858) theory of evolution did indeed change things utterly. Before that it was pretty much universally accepted that the totality of things could be arranged in a hierarchy from top to bottom in the order God, Mind, Design, Order, Chaos, Nothingness.
It was accepted that all movement of effect in that hierarchy was from higher elements downwards. Then along came Darwin and Wallace to propose that things actually move in the opposite direction; out of chaos order can arise, out of order design can arise, out of design mind can arise.
Darwin and Wallace further proposed a credible mechanism, natural selection, to explain how these changes occurred.
Darwin set out to explain the relationship between the different species of life and how these species changed over time. His conclusion was that existing forms of life have slowly arisen, through natural selection, from somewhat different forms by a process of gradual modification.
Natural selection is the process whereby nature unconsciously favours the increase of those individuals displaying characteristics that suit them to their environment better than their fellows.
In this way, slowly emerging changes in an organism are naturally selected, and after a long period of time this unconscious process produces organisms `designed' to live efficiently and effectively in the environment.
In his book The Descent of Man, Darwin makes it clear that humankind also arose through evolution. In other words, our most prized possession, the conscious mind, is the product of unconscious natural selection.
This was the most radical proposal imaginable at the time and, to this day, many people cannot accept it. Even Alfred Russell Wallace, who was the co-discoverer of the principle of evolution, could not take matters this far.
I appreciate why many people find it instinctively unpalatable to think that the mind arose out of the unconscious selection of random changes.
Humans are part of nature, but are also obviously very different from the rest of nature. We are self-conscious, we can reason, we have language and culture. It is much more palatable to think that we have a spark of the divine, that we are connected upwards rather than effected from below.
Many people fear and despise evolution because of its perceived knock-on implications. They feel that, if evolution is true, there is no place for God and there is no preordained purpose in the world.
If evolution is true there are no absolute rights and wrongs, and codes of morality become, at best, guidelines to ensure efficient behaviour. If evolution is accepted, there is no compelling reason for people to be good.
Natural theology produced several proofs for the existence of God. The best of these proofs was the argument from design.
This pointed to the sophisticated design that is obvious in the biological world. Where design exists there must be a designer, and that designer is God. Before the theory of evolution, that argument made sense.
However, Darwin and Wallace knocked the legs from under it by showing that natural selection can produce design. But, while this invalidates the argument from design, it does not disprove the existence of God.
Is it possible to have it both ways, i.e. to believe both in evolution and in a God by whose will the world exists and operates? In my opinion, the answer is yes.
I am a Christian and I also believe in evolution. My belief in God does not rest to any significant extent on identifying gaps in nature that science cannot explain, and invoking God to account for these gaps.
I am content that science should go on uncovering mechanisms that explain the natural world. Nevertheless, I think that the basic material (quarks, electrons etc) of which the universe is made is so wonderful as to make it not unreasonable to think that it exists by the will of God.
According to the picture provided by science, the universe has bootstrapped its way by natural means all the way from hydrogen in the beginning to Einstein in the 20th century. Granted, it remains to be demonstrated that several huge steps along the way, such as the origin of life and the development of consciousness, occurred by purely natural means.
However, let us assume that they did, and it is not unlikely that this will eventually be demonstrated. There is no evidence that God interferes with the natural unfolding of the world through the operation of the laws of nature.
This would mean that the entire world developed naturally and inevitably to its present state because of the nature of the basic fabric of the universe.
In that event we must stand in awe at the amazing potential built into the basic stuff of the universe and ask how this can be so.
Science provides natural explanations for natural phenomena. It is not competent to investigate the supernatural.
Neither should we look to science to provide us with moral or ethical codes, although science can provide information useful in part in forming such codes. God is, by definition, supernatural.
Science and religion occupy different spheres, but there is no necessary conflict between the two.
It is very unwise to use gaps in existing understanding of the world as `proof' of the existence of God. Such a proof can stand only until a natural explanation arises. It seems to me that the existence of God is not a thing that can ever be proved. If there is no God, this is obviously true. If there is a God, and if this ever became self-evident, it would remove the need for faith, and for the sensible exercise of free will on our part.
The lack of objective rational certainty in this matter coupled with the existence of just enough evidence for God, when apprehended by the whole being, seems to be an essential element that validates faith between humans, as free agents, and God, whose nature we dimly reflect and in whose direction we aspire to move.
William Reville is a senior lec- turer in biochemistry at UCC