In the beginning: what Darwin really believed

IN his letter (September 20), Con Hayes is not quite correct in describing the theory of evolution as being Darwin’s alone.

It was widely proclaimed and rejected in Darwin’s time — his grandfather having written on the subject in the early 1790s. Mr Hayes also asserts that “order in living things and cosmic order can be explained without resort to any designer”.

This would appear to conflict with Darwin’s own opinion when he wrote the first edition of Origin of Species.

He refutes the theory that “each species has been independently created”, and goes on to say: “To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes.”

In his book, Darwin never claimed he was explaining the origin of life. What he did attempt to explain was how various forms of existing life diversified or became extinct while coping with the changing environment — a theory with which most Christians would have no difficulty.

In the same letters page, Orlaith Ní Challanáin sees a conflict between an “always existing” creator and a universe that had a beginning.

I’m sure she is aware of Einstein’s relativity claim that the measurement of time can differ in two separate frames of reference.

All of 2,000 years ago, even St Peter claimed that “a day with God is like a thousand years, a thousand years is like a day”.

I observe a photon takes 34 years to reach me from the star Arcturus. The photon itself experiences no time. Time is not something that ticks on our clocks!

So Miss Ní Challanáin is a brave woman to relate and equate the passage of time in a physical frame of reference to that experienced in a spiritual frame of reference.

Even Einstein would have second thoughts about taking that on!

Séan Fitzgerald

Shournagh Drive

Blarney

Co Cork