Well, this may not be a very funny joke, without meaning to insult anyone who is now rolling around with laughter. But that proves how difficult a question and how intense a debate this glaring disparity causes. Ever since the first scientific investigations into evolution, its collisions with religion have been numerous and often vicious.
How can we possibly reconcile such vastly differing views? Since Darwin there have of course been many scientists involved in evolutionary research, but let us nevertheless begin with a quote from Darwin himself:
"Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some primordial form, into which life was first breathed"
As any scientist will tell you, breath comes from life, not before it. So Darwin’s view is that there must have been some entity, some sentient being able to breath life into the very first life form. He does not specifically state this is God, but I would be interested to hear who else this could possibly be.
So Darwin was a religious man. One could argue this must have made publishing his findings all the more difficult for him, as he would have known the test of faith it was about to cause. But did he speak directly against Scripture? What does the Bible say about evolution?
The answer to that is of course pretty much nothing. The Bible’s job is not to teach us the how, but the why. It is widely believed that the book of Genesis was written by Moses. We can address at a later date precisely who he was; let us take it as read for now that he was a very wise man, whether you believe he was charged as such by God or not. However, he was not a biologist. Let us all suppose we were shown somehow that Moses was given his wisdom by God, and was told directly how the world was created. Would God have given him literal descriptions? Would he have told him about quantum singularities, the Big Bang, the expansion of energy, the formation of the Galaxy and Solar System, the cooling of the planets, the formation and evolution of the continents, plants, sea creatures, land animals, and, eventually, Man?
If he had, there is no way Moses would have understood. And whilst many religious believers will admit they do not always understand what God is telling them, in the case of Moses, how would he have spread God’s word efficiently and written the beginning of the world’s all-time best-selling book if he no clue as to what he was saying?
But here is the key: despite this, the Bible still does actually get it right! See the list I gave a couple of paragraphs ago? The earth is formed first, then the plants, sea creatures, land animals and humans. This we know from science to be true, and this is the correct order given in the Bible too. In fact the Bible mentions the birds came after the fish, followed by livestock, and man. Palaeontology shows us that at some point fish evolved limbs from needing to drag themselves from shrinking pond to shrinking pond, and eventually became amphibians, which led to the reptiles and the birds before the mammals, the group of animals that livestock belongs to. So the Bible misses out frogs, crocodiles and dinosaurs in its account of evolution. Big deal.
The mathematics of this is fairly clear. The Bible tells us God created these six things, these stages of evolution, in the correct order. If this was a fluke, it was a quite extraordinary one. Getting one right would be a one in six chance. The chances of getting all six in the correct order through guesswork would be one in 720. Earth, plants, fish, birds, mammals, humans. A perfect six.
Of course, the ‘other’ main issue which brings evolution and the Bible into conflict is the origin of Man. When the theory that we evolved from primordial apes was first documented, it was widely ridiculed by a society which had been taught, beyond doubt, that we were created by God, literally. So much so, that a commonly-used phrase of disbelief (“...and I’m a monkey’s uncle!”) quickly came into fashion, and stuck around to this day, even though our nieces and nephews are now only metaphorical monkeys.
But again, the Bible’s job is not to teach us exactly how God created Man. Let’s suppose that a voice boomed out from Heaven telling everyone in the world beyond any doubt that, in fact, evolution was not the way we were created. So what was it? The Bible says, “So God created man in his own image...he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). But it doesn’t tell us how. It doesn’t tell us whether it was an oven and clay, (as Ted Hughes suggested in his children’s book 'How The Whale Became') or whether it was a long process of evolution. Even if God simply yelled, “Abracadabra” and Adam appeared, the Bible does not tell us. And no one can deny there must have been a 'how', else we wouldn’t be here in the first place.
One thing is for sure – if God created us, He created us with inquisitive minds, destined to find out about the world and the universe around us. Why create us this way if we were not intended to find out the truth? Not the truths of the Bible, which we were already told, but the 'other' truths, those of science, which God also created? The challenge we have been set is to reconcile both sets of truths. So here is my attempt at doing so.
Bears. Big, dangerous predators. They love fish, and don’t love being disturbed. Encountering a bear means get out of the way, or experience their wrath. But, like most other animals, they procreate the same way, from a DNA point of view. When a new bear is growing, it needs a template to copy so that it becomes a bear and not a turtle or whatever. You may be aware that DNA strands are formed in a kind of double helix pattern. In the quite brilliant TV programme 'Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey', astrophysicist Neil Degrasse-Tyson explains how a DNA strand is split in two like a zip, copied and then reconstructed to create a new animal.
Sometimes, though, a small portion of DNA strand is wrong. A tiny imperfection might result in a mutation, which had not been present in that species in previous generations. A small difference in bear DNA might result in, say, a bear cub being born with white fur instead of brown.
Of course, that DNA imperfection would then perpetuate, and more white bears would be born. Being migratory animals, it would not be long before bears found their way to more northerly, Arctic climates. And then what happens? The white bears would find they would be better equipped to hunt for food in the frozen north, where their white fur would camouflage them more efficiently. The brown bears would have to stay in forest habitat as they would not be able to compete against the white bears in the snow.
I have just described, in very simplistic form (but I am no biologist) the evolution of the polar bear. Science knows how evolution happens, and it is wonderful to be able to break it down into its infinitesimal components. But have we gone far enough? What actually caused the DNA imperfection, the mutation which resulted in a new species of bear? Blind luck? Or design?
Well that, of course, is for each of you to decide. But my point is that we do not have to make a ‘choice’ between whether we believe in evolution and whether we believe in God. Here lies just one amongst a myriad of explanations that others far more intelligent than me will discover. Explanations of how. How God created us, and did so by creating evolution, using the laws of science which He also created.
I feel as though I have rambled on for quite some time, and yet only covered the tip of the iceberg. Thanks for reading, and whether or not you decide to go on to explore the whole iceberg, good luck.
