Evolution or Creation?

by Prof. Carlo Fonseka

(March 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Dr. VJM de Silva was my senior contemporary, fellow-hosteller and friend at the Colombo Medical School. In the Daily Mirror of 8 June 2006, he has made a cogent polemical case against the authenticity and insensitivity to Christian religious sentiment of the story-line in Dan Brown's controversial novel Da Vinci Code and the film based upon it. Despite his judgement that the book and film are blasphemous of his religion, he regrets the ban imposed on the film in this country. His antidote to the film is counter-propaganda. In all this he has my concurrence. However, in the course of his polemic, he digresses to take a swipe at the very foundation of modern biology, by dismissing organic evolution as scientific fiction. Owing to my respect and affection for VJM, I should not wish to cross swords with him on any matter, especially because we have both now exhausted our biblical lifespans and ought to rest in peace. Even so, the cavalier fashion in which he dismisses organic evolution as though it were mere fiction, and the way he selectively quotes Charles Darwin in support of theism and creation, compel me to confront him, not so much to refute him, as to set the record straight.

Evolution is fact

Dr. VJM pontificates that "evolution is not established fact like physics and chemistry". I cannot believe that my friend could have written such an inane and nonsensical sentence. Has he forgotten that physics and chemistry are not "facts" but branches of science? So what on earth does he mean by saying evolution is not an established fact like physics and chemistry? It's rather like saying that the Fort Railway Station is not an established fact like history and geography. Dr VJM to the contrary, I know of no eminent modern biologist (non-religious or religious) who does not regard the phenomenon of organic evolution as established fact. It is widely accepted by the scientific community as the most intellectually satisfying, evidence-based natural explanation hitherto available for the organized complexity and diversity of living things on earth. In the special introduction Sir Julian Huxley FRS wrote in 1958 to the centenary publication of Charles Darwin's classic on evolution The Origin of Species, he poses the question: Why is the Origin of Species such a great book? His answer is as follows: "First of all, because it convincingly demonstrates the fact of evolution: it provides a vast and we1l-chosen body of evidence showing that existing animals and plants cannot have been separately created in their present forms but must have evolved from earlier forms by slow transformation.

Facts and theory

Facts are discovered solely by observation. It is true that the process of organic evolution cannot be observed even as it occurs in the same way that, say, we can observe (liquid) water changing its physical state to ice (solid) on cooling. The reason is that organic evolution is necessarily an extremely slow process, taking place over millions of years. This is why there is some basis for people to assert that "evolution is not established fact", because the phenomenon of one species changing into another has not been directly observed. When, however, the vast body of accumulated evidence in favour of organic evolution is weighed by minds trained in scientific analysis, the reality of evolution emerges as an inescapable fact, and a compelling truth. As against this, what is the reason for believing in creation? The only reason is irrational faith in an ancient book which says that it was revealed by God Almighty to a chosen tribe in the Middle East several thousand years ago.

Basis of life

Let me cite here just one bit of evidence that VJM and I did not learn in biology when we were schoolboys. Today, every schoolchild knows that all forms of life – people, animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses – are derived from one common substance called deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, the physico-chemical basis of life. A molecule of DNA is made up of just four kinds of building blocks: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). From bacteria to baboons to beauty queens, they are all derivatives of various permutations and combinations of AT and GC. On 26 February 2001, TIME magazine, a fairly reliable popularizer of scientific knowledge reported that humans and chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA. This does not mean, as some misguided people believe, that humans are modified chimpanzees; it only means they were our distant cousins a few million years ago. In the teeth of all such evidence staring in the face, to refuse obstinately to see that organic evolution fits the facts better than creation is – in Shakespearean language – to exhibit "an understanding simple and unschooled" and to be guilty of "a fault to nature".

Geology

At this point, I am reminded of a naturalist called Gosse, who was also a strong believer in the Genesis story of creation. As a naturalist, he was familiar with the geological evidence that pointed to evolution. He squared the geological evidence with his belief in special creation by assuming that when God created the world from nothing, he did so with fossils of dead animals and plants duly inserted into the geological strata so that from day 1, the world seemed to have had a long past history! No one, of course, can prove him wrong. On the other hand, Teilhard de Chardin, a geologist, anthropologist and theologian and his disciple in Sri Lanka, my dear friend Father Mervyn Fernando, have no problem about accepting evolution and remaining theist. Dr VJM’s faith in the literal truth of the Bible is made of sterner stuff and is evidently cast in the classical mould: credo quia absurdum – I believe it because it is absurd.

"Never an atheist"

Dr VJM refers to the fact that Charles Darwin is on record as having written to a correspondent that he "has never been an atheist in the sense denying the existence of God". This is true as far as it goes, but to get an insight into the state of his mind concerning his religious beliefs, it is necessary to locate him and his discovery of evolution in the religious, social and cultural milieu of the time in which he lived (1809 – 1882). An 807 – page biography of Charles Darwin titled Darwin, which does just that, was published in 1991 by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. The information I am going to retail below has been culled from this book and I should be glad to lend my copy of it to VJM should he wish to verify my quotations from it.

Candid religious beliefs

The letter from which Dr VJM has quoted Darwin’s remark that "he has never been an atheist" is contained in Volume 1 of a 3-volume publication titled Life and Letters, published in 1887, five years after the death of Charles Darwin. According to Desmond and Moore, Life and Letters is a "censored, shorn and stitched" work. It is not so well known that in 1876, that is to say, 6 years before his death, Charles Darwin composed a document meant to be a posthumous message to his family. It was not meant for the public. It was solely for the family’s attention. In it, he was utterly candid about his religious views. In it he says that his belief in "Christianity as a divine revelation" had withered gradually. He declares that he could not "see how any one ought to wish Christianity to be true" (Darwin, page 623). He also says that he was one "with no assured and ever-present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward" (Darwin, page 636). He added "I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind" (Darwin, page 636).

Concern for wife

One must wonder why Charles Darwin was so non-committal and ambiguous about expressing his religious beliefs. One reason must surely have been his own genuine uncertainty about first and last things. Another certainly was his anxiety and determination not to upset his devoted wife who was also passionately devoted to the doctrines of the Church of England. Charles Darwin called her the "best and kindest of wives", and she had presented him with no less than nine children. Darwin asserted that a man can be ardent theist and evolutionist" and named the famous writer Charles Kingsley and Professor Asa Gray as examples (Darwin, page 636). The first reviews of Origin of Species indicated that Charles Darwin had touched a raw nerve in Bible-based Christian England. A reviewer in the prestigious Atheneum said that according to Charles Darwin, man was evolved from monkeys, and was therefore not immortal. This upset Mrs. Darwin and her distress infuriated Charles. "The manner in which the reviewer drags in immortality and sets the priests at me and leaves me at their mercies is base", Darwin exploded. In the event, the second edition of the Origin of Species included a major concession to Christian belief. The grand final sentence of the first edition of the Origin of Species went like this: "There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved". Dr VJM will be glad and relieved to learn that in the second edition, and all subsequent editions of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin inserted the words "by the Creator" after the word "breathed" in the final sentence quoted above. Thus what was perhaps the greatest discovery in the history of science had been made palatable to the prevailing dominant religious ethos.

Burial in Westminster Abbey

Charles Darwin died on 19 April 1882. The man who said that revealing his discovery of the fact of evolution was like "confessing a murder" came to be buried in Westminster Abbey. He was eulogized by the Church for his "ardent pursuit of truth" and as "a true Christian gentleman" (Darwin, page 675). An old English lady’s tribute to Darwin was enchanting: "To be sure, Darwin proved that there is no God. But God is so kind, he will forgive him".