Only a liberal Protestant and a very liberal Catholic could accept theory of evolution

I AGREE it’s a little unfair to give one person all the public credit, but it’s conventional shorthand in science to attribute foundation ideas to the main originator.

In the case of evolution by natural selection, significant credit is also given to Wallace — but Darwin was definitely the main man. However, there is no scientific basis for giving credit to Darwin’s grandfather, or indeed other 18th or 19th century writers on evolution such as Lamarck (Séan Fitzgerald, Letters, October 5).

Mr Fitzgerald suggests that a quote from Darwin contradicts a claim I had made in an earlier letter (September 20) that ‘order in living things … can be explained without resort to a designer’.

This is what Darwin had to say in his autobiography: “The old argument from design in nature as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of the bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and the action of natural selection than in the course which the wind blows.”

In other words, order (complexity) arises in living things without a designer. There is no basis here for claiming that Darwin was contradicting himself. Mr Fitzgerald’s other suggestion that most Christians would have no difficulty in accepting Darwinian evolution bears close examination. Historically, and indeed right down to the present day, this seems a rather dubious claim — I don’t know about the precise stats but, for example, many millions of evangelical and Baptist American Christians reject evolution outright as the work of Satan.

I can only think of two significant Christian groups who might claim to accept evolution without reservation — liberal Protestants and very liberal Catholics. Let me pose a few of the difficulties which any Christian must have addressed if she/he accepts evolution unreservedly: the human species is a branch of the evolutionary tree, the same as any other species, and any special creation — by way of ‘ensoulment’, for example — has no place in evolutionary theory.

How is a doctrine of ‘first parents’ compatible with evolution?

How is a doctrine of ‘original sin’ compatible with evolution?

How is a doctrine of ‘redemption’ taking place a mere 2000 years ago compatible with the existence of the human species for at least 150,000 years?

I await enlightenment.

Con Hayes

Kerry Road

Tower

Blarney

Co Cork