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I'm a huge admirer of Charles Darwin.

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His theory of evolution is one of
the greatest contributions to science

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150 years ago, his theory changed mankind's
perception of life on earth forever.

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I believe religious alternatives
like creationism

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and intelligent design are nonsense.

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You may think that that would make
me an atheist, but I am a Christian.

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I believe in God.

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As a philosopher and theologian, I write
and lecture on Darwinism and Religion,

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and I am disturbed how the debate
has been hijacked by extremists.

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On one side stands Richard Dawkins,

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crusader against the belief in God.

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Not only is it unscientific,

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it doesn't do justice
to the grandeur of the universe.

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Dawkins is the flag bearer of a strand
of Darwinism called ultra-Darwinism,

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which believes the theory
of evolution implies atheism.

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There's no role
to play by a creative God,

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an intelligent God,
a benign God of any sort.

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And facing them
are the fundamentalist believers

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who tell us evolution is wrong.

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The Bible tells us...

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the age of the earth. The universe
is only about 6000 years.

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I believe that Christ was God incarnate
and that he was resurrected from the dead.

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But I also believe creationists
are wrong to read Genesis literally.

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The war has gone on long enough,

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so I'm on a journey
to the heart of this conflict

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to show that it is possible to believe
in both Darwin's theory and God.

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I'll be discovering what traditional Christianity
really thought about the creation of life,

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unravelling the true impact of
Darwin's theory in Victorian Britain,

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and seeing whether modern Darwinism
does indeed destroy my Christian faith.

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In November 1859, one upstanding
Victorian would publish a theory

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that would challenge everything
we understood about the world.

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He was Charles Darwin.

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Science was about to launch its most
deadly weapon in its war against religion.

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The arrival of Darwin's theory
of evolution is seen by many

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as the death of divine creation,

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and the birth of modern atheism.

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Darwin's theory has been called
a universal acid.

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It has eaten away through every traditional
understanding of the world, including belief in God.

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It contradicted the Biblical view

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that God created the world -
and plants and animals -

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in just six days, 6000 years ago.

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If this account was central to
Christianity, then it was in grave danger.

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But to think this is to misunderstand
the very essence of my faith.

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I've come to Israel,
the land of the Bible,

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to uncover what the founders of Christianity
thought about the creation of life.

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There is an assumption
that for thousands of years,

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people thought that it was a factual account
of the actual creation of life on earth.

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But to assume this is to make a huge
mistake about the meaning of the Bible.

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And to see why,

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we need to look closely
at what it actually tells us.

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"Genesis, chapter one.

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"In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth.

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"God created the light and darkness
and the first day was formed. "

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Genesis 1 continues to tell us
what God created on each day.

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On the third day, the land produces vegetation
- trees and plants are made.

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And on the sixth day, God makes all
the creatures, including humans -

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who are made in his image.

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But something confusing happens
when we get to chapter two.

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We are told a different story.

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We are told that Adam was made
before any plants appeared.

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In chapter one,

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man and woman are made together
after all the plants and animals.

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In chapter two, they are made separately,
and Adam is made before any plant appears.

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The two accounts
contradict each other.

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I'm in Jerusalem

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to see what early biblical scholars
made of this.

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What I find will be a surprise
to many - even some Christians.

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Ah, this is the man I'm looking for,

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Philo of Alexandria,
a first-century Jewish philosopher.

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Philo noticed that in the Bible there were
several passages which contradicted each other.

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Rather than this being a problem, Philo saw
this as a clue to how the Bible should be read.

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For Philo, there were
always two meanings - a literal one,

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which told us what happened, and an allegorical
one, which communicated a deeper meaning.

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For him, sometimes the allegorical
was more important than the literal.

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If in scripture
we came across a contradiction,

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that told us not to take it at face
value, to look for a deeper meaning.

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That is what Philo did with
the first two chapters of Genesis.

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For him, chapter one was an attempt to
make sense of the creation of the world.

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It was about the meaning
of existence itself.

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The message was
that creation was a gift -

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God had created something
from nothing.

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Chapter two had a different message.

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It focused
on what it meant to be human.

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The story of Adam and Eve eating fruit from
the Tree of Knowledge, of good and evil,

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and being banished from the Garden of Eden
was describing the fallibility of human nature.

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For Philo, the two accounts were
myths in the true sense of the term,

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stories that reveal deeper truths
about these fundamental aspects of life.

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'I've come to the Ecole Biblique
to meet Father Gregory Tatum,

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'to see if these views were typical
of early Christians. '

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The Church approaches
the Bible in recognising that

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truth takes many forms -
by its nature, it's complex.

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So it's not traditional to interpret
Genesis literally? It is not.

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The Fathers of the Church would not
have asked, "Is the Bible true or false?"

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That would not have occurred to them.

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They'd have asked, "What is the truth that God wants
to communicate to us in this text or that text?"

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So we need myth on occasion
to communicate complex truths?

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Mythological speech
is often the only kind

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we can use to talk
about important things in life.

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So this approach to truth,

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this approach to scriptures
is not a modern anomaly,

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or invention, it's what the church
has always been about?

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That's the position of the Church.

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Reading Genesis as myth and metaphor
is not a modern trend.

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This has always been the
mainstream view, this is orthodoxy.

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And we see it clearly in one of the most influential
thinkers in all of Christian history, Saint Augustine.

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Writing in the fifth century,
Saint Augustine wrote a text

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helpfully entitled
The Literal Meaning Of Genesis.

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For Augustine, the authors of Genesis were
trying to communicate unfathomable events.

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How do you communicate the beginning
of existence or time itself?

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This meant we had to use
different modes of communication.

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Augustine even warns Christians

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against treating Genesis,
or the Bible, as science or literal,

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saying they'd be ridiculed
for talking nonsense.

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If we take the Bible only literally,

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we will have an impoverished
account, not a richer one,

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and there will be no room
for theological reflection.

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Saint Augustine has another and almost prescient
point to make about the creation of life.

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He wrote that God is not temporal,

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and it is only for us, being a part
of the process, that time exists.

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He says that life involves a process of
realisation through the course of time.

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He tells us that,
over time, life evolves.

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And many of the Church Fathers
echoed his views.

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This is not to say that Augustine
knew about natural selection,

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but if we were to tell him
about this today,

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he would be wholly unperturbed.

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When we read what the early Fathers
of the Church wrote about the Bible,

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it's clear it stands at the heart of
Christianity, not as a science textbook,

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but as
a communication of God's nature,

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and the reason for existence.

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For them,
God was not an armchair God

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who sat outside of his creation
watching it unfold,

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but nor was it a deity
who intervenes arbitrarily.

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Rather, God was seen
as ever-present in all creation.

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This was, and remains,
the view of orthodox Christianity,

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a view that would be completely
compatible with Darwin's theory.

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But, of course, Christians
have not always remembered this,

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and over the centuries, there have
been some who read Genesis literally.

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The most significant took place in the
16th century, during the Reformation.

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I've returned to England, for in Westminster Abbey
lies someone who was central to this development.

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The Reformation saw
some Christians reject the authority

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of the Catholic Church in Rome,

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embracing instead the Bible
as the ultimate source of authority.

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Scripture, not the Pope,
was now their master.

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The decision of Luther and Calvin
to question Papal authority

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opened the floodgates for anyone
to read the Bible as they wished.

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Hundreds of years
before the Reformation,

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Saint Augustine had warned
against using the Bible

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to deduce the exact way in which
the earth was formed, but in 1650,

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one Irish archbishop did just that,
Archbishop James Ussher.

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Ussher believed the Bible held the
information as to how the world began.

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He worked like a detective...

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unravelling all the clues
that were hidden in the Bible.

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He noted down
every date that was mentioned,

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and he calculated all the periods of
time covered in the numerous genealogies.

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Taking this information
into account,

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Ussher was able to determine the
exact moment God created the earth.

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It was on the evening
of the 22nd of October, 4004 BC.

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Ussher's calculation would have remained, at
best, an interesting, if eccentric, speculation

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were it not for the fact that it made it
into every page of the King James Bible,

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the most widely read edition
of the Bible for the next 300 years.

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But, despite this,
traditional Christianity prevailed.

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The book of Genesis
was not to be read literally.

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And by the time
we get to the 19th century,

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Victorian Christians were unearthing
evidence which would stop them

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from making the same mistake
as Ussher.

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In the first half of the 19th century,
every fashionable member of society

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would have had a souvenir that directly
contradicted the biblical age of earth -

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a fossil.

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Advances in the understanding of
fossils and the formation of rocks

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led geologists to propose that the earth was
formed over a series of millions of years.

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It was unquestionably much older
than the age suggested by Ussher.

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And there was another discovery which flew
in the face of a literal reading of Genesis.

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It destroyed the idea that God had
made all the creatures on the same day.

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Victorian scientists were
unearthing the fossils of dinosaurs,

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millions of years older
than the oldest-known human remains.

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And what did the Church
think of this?

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It could hardly oppose it,

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as the geologists who were proposing these ideas
were Anglican clergymen. They were men of God.

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For most of the 19th century,
science was almost

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a branch of religion, with Anglican clerics
holding the top jobs at Oxford and Cambridge.

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I've arranged to meet historian
Pietro Corsi to understand

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the relationship between religion
and science in the 19th century.

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By the time of Darwin's
Origin of Species,

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only a minority
of Anglican ministers believed

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the earth was
as the Bible described it.

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Those who were interested in geology

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accepted geology as a science and
were not worried about the question,

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"How old was the earth?" They simply
accepted that it must have been pretty old.

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So people who believe
that the Bible

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had a precise description of the earth, by
that time, belong almost to the lunatic fringe.

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In November of 1859,

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Victorian Britain was confronted
with the Origin of Species,

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Charles Darwin's masterpiece.

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All life on earth had evolved
over billions of years,

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through variation and selection,
from a common ancestor.

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And that included mankind.

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WOLF HOWLS

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The story we have been told
is that this shattered Christianity,

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wrecking the belief
that God created life in six days.

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History tells us that this is
the moment that Darwin killed God.

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But I find this strange, because,
as we have already discovered,

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traditional Christianity had no reason
to be threatened by Darwin's ideas,

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and Victorian Christians already had a
sophisticated understanding of the earth's formation.

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So where did it all go wrong?

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Something had happened to
Christianity in Victorian England.

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Some Christians had broken away
from the traditional view

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of God and creation.
It was a very English development,

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confined to these islands,
and peculiar to Anglicanism.

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Britain was in the midst
of the Industrial Revolution,

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forging a brave new world
of design and engineering.

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Into this society, a completely
new idea of God gained popularity,

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presenting God as the great
mechanic, the ultimate designer.

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Its leading proponent
was William Paley,

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a theologian who compared the intricate nature
of life to the inner workings of a watch.

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He argued that life was so complex, each
creature must have been individually designed.

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TRAIN WHISTLES

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Darwin's evidence
blew this idea out of the water,

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and caused outrage amongst those
who embraced this view.

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How dare they be compared to apes?

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It was these Christians who were shocked and
disgusted by the implications of Darwin's idea.

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His theory did kill God -
but only Paley's God,

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which was at odds with the teachings
of the founding Fathers of the Church.

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As for Europe, Darwin's theory
made no theological fuss.

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It was very much a storm

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in an English teacup.

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But even in Britain, there were plenty of
Christians who welcomed the idea of evolution.

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Nine years after Darwin published, the
Roman-Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman said,

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"Darwinism, true or not,
is not necessarily atheistic.

229
00:20:38,060 --> 00:20:43,780
"On the contrary, it may be suggesting a
larger idea of divine providence and skill. "

230
00:20:46,420 --> 00:20:49,985
Even the Anglican hierarchy agreed.

231
00:20:50,020 --> 00:20:57,540
The Reverend Charles Kingsley affirmed that evolution
revealed, "A noble conception of the Deity. "

232
00:21:01,820 --> 00:21:05,465
What of Darwin? For many,
he's the father of atheism -

233
00:21:05,500 --> 00:21:09,940
born a Christian, has a theory
of evolution, loses his faith -

234
00:21:09,975 --> 00:21:13,945
proof, surely, that evolution
destroys belief in God? No.

235
00:21:13,980 --> 00:21:19,260
Darwin was born a Christian, and lost
his faith, but not because of evolution.

236
00:21:23,420 --> 00:21:27,905
In 1851,
Darwin was hit by personal tragedy.

237
00:21:27,940 --> 00:21:34,100
His ten-year-old daughter Annie was struck
with what is now thought to have been cholera,

238
00:21:34,135 --> 00:21:37,780
and shortly before she passed away,
was brought here,

239
00:21:37,815 --> 00:21:41,500
to the Spa Town of Malvern.

240
00:21:42,660 --> 00:21:47,460
Nick Spencer has been finding out
about how her death affected Darwin.

241
00:21:49,780 --> 00:21:54,160
She died of a fever, which lasted
for about two weeks or so.

242
00:21:54,195 --> 00:21:58,540
Darwin was with her for the
second week. He rushed from Downe,

243
00:21:58,575 --> 00:22:01,825
where he was with Emma,
his wife, who was pregnant.

244
00:22:01,860 --> 00:22:06,065
He wrote to her, saying, "You
wouldn't recognise our daughter. "

245
00:22:06,100 --> 00:22:11,980
"She's wasting away, couldn't take food, pinched features
- she's not the girl we knew. "

246
00:22:12,015 --> 00:22:15,345
What impact did her
death have on Darwin's faith?

247
00:22:15,380 --> 00:22:20,940
It's the thing that wields the knife.
It's fair to say, by the time of her death,

248
00:22:20,975 --> 00:22:26,065
he's definitely a believer in God, a theist
- that has a Christian flavour.

249
00:22:26,100 --> 00:22:31,980
But the suffering he sees in Annie's death
and the sense of injustice and futility

250
00:22:32,015 --> 00:22:36,060
is the thing that really
finishes his Christian faith.

251
00:22:46,060 --> 00:22:50,660
Her death shows that, whilst we must
remember Darwin the scientist,

252
00:22:50,695 --> 00:22:53,105
we must remember Darwin the father.

253
00:22:53,140 --> 00:22:57,800
Suffering in the world is a constant
challenge to people of faith.

254
00:22:57,835 --> 00:23:02,460
The arrival of the evolution made
this no harder, or easier, to bear.

255
00:23:07,460 --> 00:23:13,460
The Origin of Species is not the great
atheistic treatise it is often claimed to be.

256
00:23:13,495 --> 00:23:17,505
When it was published,
eight years after Annie's death,

257
00:23:17,540 --> 00:23:22,220
Darwin talked about the impossibility
of this wonderful universe

258
00:23:22,255 --> 00:23:24,465
being conceived by blind chance,

259
00:23:24,500 --> 00:23:29,500
believing that there must be
an intelligent mind behind it all.

260
00:23:29,535 --> 00:23:33,860
He presented his work
as beginning and ending with God.

261
00:23:39,580 --> 00:23:44,625
Near the end of his life,
he declared, "It seems to me absurd

262
00:23:44,660 --> 00:23:50,825
"to doubt that a man may be an
ardent theist and an evolutionist. "

263
00:23:50,860 --> 00:23:56,660
In this light, it's unfair to proclaim
Darwin as the father of modern atheism.

264
00:23:59,540 --> 00:24:07,020
Britain was actually more religious at the end
of the 19th century than it was in the 1830s.

265
00:24:07,055 --> 00:24:12,940
Within 20 years of Darwin publishing his
theory, it was generally accepted in England.

266
00:24:14,060 --> 00:24:17,305
Darwin had not killed God,

267
00:24:17,340 --> 00:24:21,620
so why today, do we think
they are at loggerheads?

268
00:24:23,220 --> 00:24:26,465
Well, the war had not yet begun,

269
00:24:26,500 --> 00:24:30,020
and would not start
for another 60 years.

270
00:24:45,020 --> 00:24:50,100
The first big battle in the war
between evolution and Christianity

271
00:24:50,135 --> 00:24:53,300
took place where
the front line remains today,

272
00:24:53,335 --> 00:24:57,197
the American Bible Belt.

273
00:24:57,232 --> 00:25:01,025
AMERICAN COUNTRY STYLE MUSIC

274
00:25:01,060 --> 00:25:05,940
What's surprising is it had little
to do with science and religion,

275
00:25:05,975 --> 00:25:10,300
and everything to do
with politics and morality.

276
00:25:13,180 --> 00:25:19,140
Until the early 1920s, the common view
in America was the same as in Britain.

277
00:25:19,175 --> 00:25:23,740
The theory of evolution had
been accepted - in the media,

278
00:25:23,775 --> 00:25:26,265
and in educated society at least.

279
00:25:26,300 --> 00:25:30,360
So when, 60 years
after Darwin published his theory,

280
00:25:30,395 --> 00:25:34,420
America was hit by a huge
anti-evolutionary crusade,

281
00:25:34,455 --> 00:25:37,340
everyone was somewhat taken aback.

282
00:25:39,860 --> 00:25:44,140
And it all started here,
in Dayton, Tennessee.

283
00:25:47,220 --> 00:25:50,036
On a hot day in July 1925,

284
00:25:50,036 --> 00:25:52,987
this courthouse became a
battleground between liberals

285
00:25:52,988 --> 00:25:57,280
fighting for the freedom of ideas, and
Christians defending their sacred Bible.

286
00:25:57,315 --> 00:26:02,860
Touching the country's psyche, the Scopes
trial was a defining moment in American history.

287
00:26:06,260 --> 00:26:11,100
Fundamentalist Christianity was
on the rise in the American South,

288
00:26:11,135 --> 00:26:12,865
and a group in Tennessee

289
00:26:12,900 --> 00:26:18,580
had passed a law banning the teaching
of the theory of evolution in schools.

290
00:26:22,940 --> 00:26:27,700
'A young instructor, John Scopes,
disobeyed the law and stood trial.

291
00:26:27,735 --> 00:26:32,377
'The whole world looked
on in amazement as the Bible

292
00:26:32,412 --> 00:26:36,985
'went into court against
the theories of Darwin. '

293
00:26:37,020 --> 00:26:42,380
Leading the prosecution against Darwin
- William Jennings Bryan. GAVEL BANGS

294
00:26:44,460 --> 00:26:46,665
'William Jennings Bryan cried,

295
00:26:46,700 --> 00:26:52,300
'"I am more interested in the rock
of ages than in the age of rocks. "'

296
00:27:00,580 --> 00:27:06,060
Bryan was part of the growing right-wing
fundamentalist Christian movement,

297
00:27:06,095 --> 00:27:10,665
but what is less well-know, is that
he was also a devoted socialist.

298
00:27:10,700 --> 00:27:17,620
He hated social Darwinism, a new
ideology used by right-wing politicians

299
00:27:17,655 --> 00:27:22,580
to justify the stronger members
in society crowding out the weak.

300
00:27:31,660 --> 00:27:35,905
He saw the embracing of the survival
of the fittest everywhere

301
00:27:35,940 --> 00:27:42,540
and he also thought that Americans were losing
their Christian morality because of Darwinism.

302
00:27:42,575 --> 00:27:46,937
Bryan was a left-wing politician
with right-wing religious views.

303
00:27:46,972 --> 00:27:51,300
These elements came together
in his condemnation of Darwinism.

304
00:27:53,020 --> 00:27:57,140
Opposing the fundamentalists
stood Clarence Darrow,

305
00:27:57,175 --> 00:28:01,260
the defender of Scopes,
and the theory of evolution.

306
00:28:01,295 --> 00:28:02,585
'Clarence Darrow,

307
00:28:02,620 --> 00:28:05,545
'battling as always for freedom said,

308
00:28:05,580 --> 00:28:12,100
'"If today you can make it a crime
to teach evolution in schools,

309
00:28:12,135 --> 00:28:16,540
'"tomorrow,
you may ban books and newspapers. "'

310
00:28:21,660 --> 00:28:27,860
Darrow despised the power that religious
figures wielded in American law and education,

311
00:28:27,895 --> 00:28:33,060
and branded religion as the cause of
much of what was wrong in the world.

312
00:28:36,420 --> 00:28:38,185
Darrow did not stop there.

313
00:28:38,220 --> 00:28:42,300
He thought that rational science
and a theory of evolution

314
00:28:42,335 --> 00:28:45,825
was a better basis for morality
than Christianity.

315
00:28:45,860 --> 00:28:51,745
That's a morality based on survival of the fittest
- the strong triumph over the weak.

316
00:28:51,780 --> 00:28:57,780
If that's how evolution was to be taught, no
wonder the Christians of Dayton were nervous!

317
00:28:59,900 --> 00:29:03,865
Neither side made any attempt
to see whether or not

318
00:29:03,900 --> 00:29:09,745
evolution was at odds with Christianity,
both assuming the two were incompatible.

319
00:29:09,780 --> 00:29:15,780
And that would set an adversarial tone which
would cloud the debate in the years to come.

320
00:29:25,940 --> 00:29:32,180
John Scopes was found guilty of teaching
evolution and lost the court case.

321
00:29:32,215 --> 00:29:34,905
But the real conclusion of the day

322
00:29:34,940 --> 00:29:39,340
was that Darwinism and God
were now, indeed, at war.

323
00:29:40,980 --> 00:29:46,345
The trial made the conflict between
evolution and Christianity nationwide,

324
00:29:46,380 --> 00:29:51,825
and spread the idea evolution and freedom
of expression were locked in a battle

325
00:29:51,860 --> 00:29:58,100
against the restrictive dogma of religion, creating
the impression if you believed in evolution,

326
00:29:58,135 --> 00:30:01,757
you had to give up your
Christian faith and moral code.

327
00:30:01,792 --> 00:30:05,380
It left no room for a Christian
to believe in evolution.

328
00:30:13,860 --> 00:30:17,745
Looking back at the trial today,
it's intriguing to find

329
00:30:17,780 --> 00:30:22,020
the creationism of the time
was not the creationism of today.

330
00:30:22,055 --> 00:30:25,060
It was actually
rather more sophisticated.

331
00:30:30,900 --> 00:30:36,460
Prosecutor William Jennings Bryan
did not take the Genesis account

332
00:30:36,495 --> 00:30:39,625
of the world's creation
in six days at face value.

333
00:30:39,660 --> 00:30:46,140
On the contrary. For him, each of the six days
in the Bible were vast geological periods of time.

334
00:30:46,175 --> 00:30:52,620
The staunch opponent of evolution did not
believe the world was created in six literal days.

335
00:30:52,655 --> 00:30:56,385
What Bryan practised was Old Earth
creationism,

336
00:30:56,420 --> 00:31:00,745
which accepted that
the earth was millions of years old.

337
00:31:00,780 --> 00:31:07,700
The creationism that is at odds with
evolution today did not exist in the 1920s.

338
00:31:07,735 --> 00:31:10,740
It would not arrive
for another 40 years.

339
00:31:14,340 --> 00:31:17,425
# God said to Abraham kill me a son

340
00:31:17,460 --> 00:31:20,340
# Abe said, man,
you must be puttin' me on

341
00:31:20,375 --> 00:31:22,665
# God said no... #

342
00:31:22,700 --> 00:31:28,180
For 2000 years, Christianity had looked
beyond a literal reading of the Bible,

343
00:31:28,215 --> 00:31:32,700
but the biggest break from
this tradition took place in 1961.

344
00:31:33,700 --> 00:31:37,460
# Well, Abe said where do
you want this killing done?

345
00:31:37,495 --> 00:31:40,585
# God said out on highway 61... #

346
00:31:40,620 --> 00:31:44,480
By the 1960s,
America had changed radically -

347
00:31:44,515 --> 00:31:48,347
and for fundamentalist Christians,
for the worse.

348
00:31:48,382 --> 00:31:52,145
Sex outside of marriage,
experimentation with drugs,

349
00:31:52,180 --> 00:31:57,400
openness towards abortion and divorce
- these were seen as symptoms

350
00:31:57,435 --> 00:32:03,027
of a wider malaise, a breakdown in
morality not seen since the 1920s.

351
00:32:03,062 --> 00:32:08,585
But the fundamentalist churches
fought back in the way they knew best.

352
00:32:08,620 --> 00:32:14,100
The moral order could only be restored by
return to the literal word of the Bible.

353
00:32:19,860 --> 00:32:22,780
# Well, God told Noah to build an ark

354
00:32:22,815 --> 00:32:24,785
# He said it's gonna rain... #

355
00:32:24,820 --> 00:32:29,900
As if on cue, in 1961, a book was
published called The Genesis Flood.

356
00:32:29,935 --> 00:32:33,705
Written by Henry Morris,
a hydraulics engineer,

357
00:32:33,740 --> 00:32:39,300
and John Whitcomb, a Grace Brethren
elder, the book became a bestseller.

358
00:32:41,100 --> 00:32:45,585
The reason for the success
of The Genesis Flood was that

359
00:32:45,620 --> 00:32:51,220
it claimed to provide a scientific
explanation to back up the Biblical account.

360
00:32:51,255 --> 00:32:52,665
#.. on earth was dead

361
00:32:52,700 --> 00:32:55,785
# But Noah's faith was like a rock

362
00:32:55,820 --> 00:32:59,340
# God laid his ark
on a mountain top. #

363
00:33:01,060 --> 00:33:03,585
I'm curious to find out more,

364
00:33:03,620 --> 00:33:10,540
so I've come to the Creation Museum in Cincinnati,
which promotes the teachings of The Genesis Flood.

365
00:33:11,820 --> 00:33:15,620
'The Lord God drove
out the man from the Garden of Eden.

366
00:33:15,655 --> 00:33:19,420
'Adam was forced to grow food
by the sweat of his brow... '

367
00:33:19,455 --> 00:33:22,945
It's one of the strangest museums
I've ever been to,

368
00:33:22,980 --> 00:33:26,905
with a take on science and history
that I do not recognise.

369
00:33:26,940 --> 00:33:32,580
Since when did being a Christian mean
believing that dinosaurs lived with humans?

370
00:33:38,460 --> 00:33:41,980
I was hoping
Dr Terry Mortenson could tell me.

371
00:33:42,015 --> 00:33:45,100
The basic premise
is the Biblical account

372
00:33:45,135 --> 00:33:48,105
of Noah's flood in Genesis 6:8

373
00:33:48,140 --> 00:33:53,140
is a historically accurate account
of a global catastrophic flood.

374
00:33:54,740 --> 00:33:58,265
We believe that the Bible
is the word of the creator

375
00:33:58,300 --> 00:34:03,180
and he was the eyewitness. Noah
was also an eyewitness to the flood.

376
00:34:03,215 --> 00:34:06,505
The Bible tells us
Adam was created on the sixth day,

377
00:34:06,540 --> 00:34:13,940
and we believe that there are good Biblical reasons
for taking those as literal days, just like our days.

378
00:34:13,975 --> 00:34:17,065
And then the Bible,
in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11

379
00:34:17,100 --> 00:34:21,420
gives us the genealogies
from Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham,

380
00:34:21,455 --> 00:34:24,865
and if there are no gaps
in those genealogies,

381
00:34:24,900 --> 00:34:28,700
the age of the earth and universe
is about 6000 years.

382
00:34:28,735 --> 00:34:32,385
So how does the book
explain fossils?

383
00:34:32,420 --> 00:34:36,145
OK, well,
fossils are the lithofied remains

384
00:34:36,180 --> 00:34:40,225
of former living creatures.
You can't produce a fossil

385
00:34:40,260 --> 00:34:45,860
unless you bury the creature rapidly,
because - take, for example, the dinosaur -

386
00:34:45,895 --> 00:34:49,500
if it falls over, dies of old age
and lays on the ground,

387
00:34:49,535 --> 00:34:52,305
it won't be fossilised because...

388
00:34:52,340 --> 00:34:58,220
scavengers and decay processes
- the sun beating on the bones, and the rain and...

389
00:34:58,255 --> 00:35:01,657
is gonna just destroy
all the evidence.

390
00:35:01,692 --> 00:35:05,025
So the flood gives us
an explanation for

391
00:35:05,060 --> 00:35:11,220
why we have these massive sedimentary
layers with billions of fossils in them.

392
00:35:11,255 --> 00:35:15,580
Do you think dinosaurs and humans
shared the earth at the same time?

393
00:35:15,615 --> 00:35:19,825
Yes, because dinosaurs are
land animals and Genesis says that

394
00:35:19,860 --> 00:35:24,660
on day six God made the land animals,
so he would have made the dinosaurs.

395
00:35:24,695 --> 00:35:29,460
He had to make 'em sometime, unless
we accept evolution, which we don't.

396
00:35:35,220 --> 00:35:40,665
The Genesis Flood flew in the face
of all scientific evidence.

397
00:35:40,700 --> 00:35:47,220
It undid 100 years of scientific discovery,
and 2000 years of Christian theology.

398
00:35:52,140 --> 00:35:56,185
I'm Christian, but I don't recognise
the creationist view.

399
00:35:56,220 --> 00:36:01,665
They've abandoned a Christian tradition
of seeking deeper truth in the Bible.

400
00:36:01,700 --> 00:36:07,500
By turning Genesis into a science textbook,
they're calling us to worship science,

401
00:36:07,535 --> 00:36:10,305
and in so doing,
we no longer worship God.

402
00:36:10,340 --> 00:36:16,620
They've generated a clash between evolution and
God which wasn't there in the time of Darwin.

403
00:36:21,500 --> 00:36:26,380
But the latest Christian attack
on Darwinism has gone even further.

404
00:36:29,420 --> 00:36:33,700
It claims to be a scientific theory,
and not religion.

405
00:36:36,060 --> 00:36:38,500
It is intelligent design.

406
00:36:41,620 --> 00:36:46,025
Although it appeared in 1987,
it was, in fact,

407
00:36:46,060 --> 00:36:52,980
no more than a resurrection of Paley's
discredited notion of God as a designer.

408
00:36:54,860 --> 00:36:59,385
Scientists the world over reject it,

409
00:36:59,420 --> 00:37:03,665
but for me, it's biggest problem
is what it says about God.

410
00:37:03,700 --> 00:37:09,180
Intelligent design describes a God who
intervenes in the development of life,

411
00:37:09,215 --> 00:37:11,625
making improvements along the way.

412
00:37:11,660 --> 00:37:15,065
But if that's the case,
why does God not intervene

413
00:37:15,100 --> 00:37:19,665
and stop child abuse, stop famine -
indeed, stop genocide?

414
00:37:19,700 --> 00:37:25,380
The God of intelligent design is a supernatural
mechanic who is extremely good at making things,

415
00:37:25,415 --> 00:37:27,940
but appears to be lacking
in morals altogether.

416
00:37:27,975 --> 00:37:30,665
I cannot worship
that idea of a God -

417
00:37:30,700 --> 00:37:35,680
a God who is simply a bigger,
cleverer version of you or me.

418
00:37:35,715 --> 00:37:40,027
For me, God is the source
of the gift of life, of all life.

419
00:37:40,062 --> 00:37:44,340
God is He in whom we live,
move and have our very existence.

420
00:37:48,060 --> 00:37:51,820
And this is what
traditional Christianity tells us.

421
00:37:51,855 --> 00:37:55,345
God is existence itself.

422
00:37:55,380 --> 00:37:59,185
He is the creator of time itself.

423
00:37:59,220 --> 00:38:05,220
So I can see no philosophical conflict
between belief in God as creator,

424
00:38:05,255 --> 00:38:08,225
and our understanding of evolution

425
00:38:08,260 --> 00:38:13,340
as the process through which God
enables all life to unfold.

426
00:38:17,140 --> 00:38:22,780
It is my contention that Darwin's theory of
evolution did not challenge God in the 19th century,

427
00:38:22,815 --> 00:38:27,980
nor did it challenge God in the 20th century
- despite claims made by creationism.

428
00:38:28,015 --> 00:38:31,700
The only reason people thought
it did, was because of the noise,

429
00:38:31,735 --> 00:38:35,345
furore and cacophony
caused by creationists.

430
00:38:35,380 --> 00:38:40,500
But I don't think that creationism is
the true heir to the Christian tradition -

431
00:38:40,535 --> 00:38:45,620
rather they are a modern anomaly, an
aberration, a product of 20th-century anxiety.

432
00:38:52,700 --> 00:38:56,065
And that brings us
into the 21st century.

433
00:38:56,100 --> 00:39:02,820
Today it is not just creationists who
tell us that evolution and God are at war.

434
00:39:02,855 --> 00:39:06,940
Another group of fundamentalists
have entered the debate...

435
00:39:08,660 --> 00:39:10,340
Darwinian fundamentalists.

436
00:39:12,700 --> 00:39:15,825
I'm heading to Boston
to meet someone who believes

437
00:39:15,860 --> 00:39:20,065
that Darwin's theory has killed
the need for God altogether.

438
00:39:20,100 --> 00:39:27,860
He's part of a school of thought which is
referred to as universal - or ultra - Darwinism.

439
00:39:27,895 --> 00:39:33,220
It uses the theory of evolution
to target every notion of God,

440
00:39:33,255 --> 00:39:35,300
especially the Christian God.

441
00:39:43,580 --> 00:39:47,500
Daniel Dennett is one of the world's
most famous atheist philosophers.

442
00:39:47,535 --> 00:39:52,100
He has spent his career
using Darwinism to justify atheism.

443
00:39:53,820 --> 00:39:58,220
I think anybody who understands the
theory of evolution by natural selection

444
00:39:58,255 --> 00:39:59,865
recognises that there's...

445
00:39:59,900 --> 00:40:05,780
no role to play... by a creative God,
an intelligent God,

446
00:40:05,815 --> 00:40:08,905
a benign God of any sort.

447
00:40:08,940 --> 00:40:11,945
According to you,
how do you think evolution works?

448
00:40:11,980 --> 00:40:17,500
It takes no intelligence. It takes no purpose.
It just happens, you might say, automatically.

449
00:40:17,535 --> 00:40:20,380
This is Darwin's great...

450
00:40:20,415 --> 00:40:21,985
inversion.

451
00:40:22,020 --> 00:40:28,900
One of his early critics called it a strange
inversion of reasoning, and it is exactly that.

452
00:40:28,935 --> 00:40:31,197
Until Darwin came along,

453
00:40:31,232 --> 00:40:33,425
everywhere we saw a purpose.

454
00:40:33,460 --> 00:40:38,180
And Darwin showed us that we can
turn that right upside down,

455
00:40:38,215 --> 00:40:42,900
we can have a process... which isn't
smart, isn't intelligent,

456
00:40:42,935 --> 00:40:44,465
isn't trying to do anything.

457
00:40:44,500 --> 00:40:49,825
It's just the unrolling of
the mechanical laws of nature.

458
00:40:49,860 --> 00:40:55,300
Unlike Charles Darwin, ultra-Darwinists
like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins

459
00:40:55,335 --> 00:40:58,540
claim that evolution
means there cannot be a God.

460
00:41:01,020 --> 00:41:07,180
The basis for this new-found confidence
in atheism is the idea of the selfish gene.

461
00:41:07,215 --> 00:41:11,065
If we recognise
that everything that lives,

462
00:41:11,100 --> 00:41:15,900
whether it's a redwood tree,
or a whale, or a human being...

463
00:41:17,260 --> 00:41:24,420
.. has genes that have been in competition with
other genes for three billion years and counting,

464
00:41:24,455 --> 00:41:31,425
this sheds a lot of light on why
organisms are the way they are.

465
00:41:31,460 --> 00:41:38,860
Think of genes as if they were selfish, as if they
were trying to make more copies of themselves -

466
00:41:38,895 --> 00:41:41,820
trying to have lots of offspring,
in effect.

467
00:41:41,855 --> 00:41:44,345
Then you will see...

468
00:41:44,380 --> 00:41:50,500
that they do this by competing with
other genes to make survival vehicles

469
00:41:50,535 --> 00:41:53,865
that will help them
in their effort to reproduce.

470
00:41:53,900 --> 00:41:58,260
So would you describe yourself
as a Darwinian fundamentalist?

471
00:41:58,295 --> 00:42:00,180
The theory of natural selection -

472
00:42:00,215 --> 00:42:02,357
it's all or nothing.

473
00:42:02,392 --> 00:42:04,465
There are no exceptions.

474
00:42:04,500 --> 00:42:08,385
There is not
a single magnificent feature

475
00:42:08,420 --> 00:42:14,100
of anything alive in the universe
that it doesn't apply to.

476
00:42:17,780 --> 00:42:22,460
For ultra-Darwinists,
evolution explains all of existence,

477
00:42:22,495 --> 00:42:23,945
and all of reality.

478
00:42:23,980 --> 00:42:29,340
If this view was unanimous, if everyone
agreed, then there would be no place for God.

479
00:42:31,060 --> 00:42:33,065
But not everyone does agree.

480
00:42:33,100 --> 00:42:36,860
And some of those who disagree are
the best scientists in the world.

481
00:42:42,300 --> 00:42:46,425
Good evening. It's taken ten years,
it's cost billions of pounds,

482
00:42:46,460 --> 00:42:50,620
and the result is a giant leap forward
in our understanding of the human body.

483
00:42:52,620 --> 00:42:58,140
For 15 years, Francis Collins was the
leader of the Human Genome Project.

484
00:43:00,060 --> 00:43:04,145
At the start of the project, there
was an expectation that humans,

485
00:43:04,180 --> 00:43:08,780
as the most advanced creatures on earth,
would have the greatest number of genes.

486
00:43:10,460 --> 00:43:13,305
But that was not how
things turned out...

487
00:43:13,340 --> 00:43:18,740
as Francis Collins explained over a glass
of wine at his home in Washington DC.

488
00:43:21,100 --> 00:43:24,740
First came the shock we didn't have
as many genes as we thought we did.

489
00:43:24,775 --> 00:43:27,940
Mmm. People had been saying 100,000
for a long time, you know?

490
00:43:27,975 --> 00:43:30,905
It's probably
only about 20,000,

491
00:43:30,940 --> 00:43:33,465
now that the dust
has really settled here.

492
00:43:33,500 --> 00:43:38,180
'In fact, the genome of the pinot noir
grape contains more genes than a human being.

493
00:43:38,215 --> 00:43:40,705
'And rice contained even more. '

494
00:43:40,740 --> 00:43:43,585
49,000 genes... Wow.
.. more than twice our gene count.

495
00:43:43,620 --> 00:43:48,460
So, at dinner, invariably there's stuff on
your plate that has more genes than you do.

496
00:43:48,495 --> 00:43:53,060
'In fact, scientists agree that our
current understanding of the gene

497
00:43:53,095 --> 00:43:56,460
'is fast becoming as out of date
as the idea that the atom

498
00:43:56,495 --> 00:43:58,985
'is the smallest particle.

499
00:43:59,020 --> 00:44:02,505
'This is an exciting
evolutionary development,

500
00:44:02,540 --> 00:44:06,100
'but it does means that
ultra-Darwinism can no longer use

501
00:44:06,135 --> 00:44:10,105
'the selfish gene to try
and explain everything. '

502
00:44:10,140 --> 00:44:15,340
According to some, evolution is
all about the survival of the genes.

503
00:44:15,375 --> 00:44:16,985
What do you think of that?

504
00:44:17,020 --> 00:44:23,340
Well, I think that's much too narrow a
view. I mean, a gene is just a packet of DNA.

505
00:44:23,375 --> 00:44:26,945
We don't even quite know what the
boundary of that packet is any more.

506
00:44:26,980 --> 00:44:31,580
The definition of the gene has gotten blurry,
but say it's a gene that codes for a protein,

507
00:44:31,615 --> 00:44:36,505
that protein doesn't operate in
a vacuum, it interacts with others,

508
00:44:36,540 --> 00:44:42,020
and so evolution actually acts on the
organism, or even on a group of organisms.

509
00:44:42,055 --> 00:44:44,025
And so, I don't think one
can understand

510
00:44:44,060 --> 00:44:48,585
natural selection in anything
like its real force

511
00:44:48,620 --> 00:44:52,260
by reducing it to something
as simple as the selfish gene,

512
00:44:52,295 --> 00:44:55,460
and that's the only unit
that's at work there.

513
00:44:58,220 --> 00:45:01,780
'Francis Collins believes that
ultra-Darwinists are wrong to say

514
00:45:01,815 --> 00:45:05,340
'evolution is all about the survival
of the gene and nothing else,

515
00:45:05,375 --> 00:45:10,745
'but what about their claim
that evolution entails atheism?'

516
00:45:10,780 --> 00:45:14,985
Well, I think that's going well
outside the evidence. COLLINS SIGHS

517
00:45:15,020 --> 00:45:21,340
Atheism - the statement that there is
no God - is not a scientific statement.

518
00:45:21,375 --> 00:45:22,425
Let's unwrap that.

519
00:45:22,460 --> 00:45:26,345
Science is limited
to making statements about nature.

520
00:45:26,380 --> 00:45:30,745
It's very good at that, by the way,
figuring out how things work,

521
00:45:30,780 --> 00:45:36,000
but science is committing a category error
to claim dominion over the question of God.

522
00:45:36,035 --> 00:45:41,220
You're a Christian. How do you reconcile
your faith with the theory of evolution?

523
00:45:41,255 --> 00:45:42,545
Yes, evolution is true,

524
00:45:42,580 --> 00:45:49,145
but yes, God is the author of our universe,
and of our planet, and of you and me,

525
00:45:49,180 --> 00:45:57,660
and God simply used that process of evolution to carry
out that creation in a way that is incredibly elegant.

526
00:45:57,695 --> 00:46:01,580
I think evolution
is the answer to how...

527
00:46:01,615 --> 00:46:03,580
God is the answer to why.

528
00:46:06,940 --> 00:46:10,705
This doesn't mean that Collins
has opened up a gap

529
00:46:10,740 --> 00:46:13,980
for a creationist God to come in
and help explain evolution.

530
00:46:14,015 --> 00:46:18,500
The God of the gaps
was never part of Christianity.

531
00:46:20,460 --> 00:46:25,340
Still, you may think Collins is
putting his faith before his science,

532
00:46:25,375 --> 00:46:28,700
but it's not only believers
in God who share his views.

533
00:46:34,900 --> 00:46:40,460
Michael Ruse is a staunch Darwinist,
a philosopher and also an atheist.

534
00:46:41,780 --> 00:46:46,820
Ultra-Darwinists argue that the theory of
evolution entails, or necessitates, atheism.

535
00:46:46,855 --> 00:46:50,097
Have you come to the same conclusion
yourself? Absolutely not.

536
00:46:50,132 --> 00:46:53,340
I just don't think that is
something which follows at all.

537
00:46:53,375 --> 00:46:57,740
I think that it is
just simply false to say

538
00:46:57,775 --> 00:47:00,185
that Darwinism implies atheism.

539
00:47:00,220 --> 00:47:03,705
And I think that those people
like Richard Dawkins,

540
00:47:03,740 --> 00:47:07,745
like Dan Dennett, who say otherwise,
I think they're just wrong.

541
00:47:07,780 --> 00:47:14,540
I think that people make commitments about
religion, or non-religion, for other reasons,

542
00:47:14,575 --> 00:47:16,945
and then what's going to happen is

543
00:47:16,980 --> 00:47:21,180
you're going to try to make sense of
science within the context of your belief,

544
00:47:21,215 --> 00:47:22,985
or your non-belief.

545
00:47:23,020 --> 00:47:26,700
I mean, if one goes into the lab,
or one goes out into the field

546
00:47:26,735 --> 00:47:31,957
to do science, one is,
as a scientist, not looking for God.

547
00:47:31,992 --> 00:47:37,180
And therefore one should
not be surprised, disappointed,

548
00:47:37,215 --> 00:47:40,065
or pleased
when one does not find God.

549
00:47:40,100 --> 00:47:42,860
I mean, I think it's a question
of what you're after.

550
00:47:44,020 --> 00:47:47,080
I don't think science
proves the existence of God,

551
00:47:47,115 --> 00:47:50,140
I don't think science proves
the non-existence of God.

552
00:47:50,175 --> 00:47:52,780
I think science
is science is science.

553
00:47:58,660 --> 00:48:06,420
Along with many atheists, I believe that God's
existence lies beyond the reach of Darwin's theory.

554
00:48:06,455 --> 00:48:09,385
But ultra-Darwinists
haven't given up.

555
00:48:09,420 --> 00:48:11,945
They have built
on the idea of the selfish gene

556
00:48:11,980 --> 00:48:17,100
to try and show the theory of
evolution does after all imply atheism.

557
00:48:22,580 --> 00:48:26,820
A theory has emerged that thinks
it can explain everything -

558
00:48:26,855 --> 00:48:31,145
love, morality,
even my belief in a divine creator.

559
00:48:31,180 --> 00:48:35,540
So has the time come to accept
that Darwinism has killed God?

560
00:48:42,300 --> 00:48:45,380
It's a theory
which was born in Britain.

561
00:48:45,415 --> 00:48:48,065
It's called the theory of memes.

562
00:48:48,100 --> 00:48:53,145
Richard Dawkins first used the word
in his book The Selfish Gene

563
00:48:53,180 --> 00:48:58,380
to describe how it was not just
biology that was governed by evolution.

564
00:48:58,415 --> 00:49:02,945
Memes are to culture
as genes are to nature.

565
00:49:02,980 --> 00:49:10,220
A meme describes a unit of information which
survives through being selected by someone,

566
00:49:10,255 --> 00:49:13,517
and then being passed
on to another.

567
00:49:13,552 --> 00:49:17,286
# I just can't get you out of my head

568
00:49:17,321 --> 00:49:21,020
# Boy, your lovin'
is all I think about

569
00:49:21,055 --> 00:49:22,505
# I just can't get you... #

570
00:49:22,540 --> 00:49:26,700
It applies to everything.
For example, songs are memes.

571
00:49:26,735 --> 00:49:29,865
We hear them,
play them and sing them,

572
00:49:29,900 --> 00:49:34,540
and transfer them to others, and
in doing so, we aid their survival.

573
00:49:51,140 --> 00:49:55,185
The theory of memes attempts
to explain all human activity

574
00:49:55,220 --> 00:50:00,825
in evolutionary terms, including
culture, religion and morality.

575
00:50:00,860 --> 00:50:07,740
It goes much further than saying there's no God
- it concludes that there's no you or me.

576
00:50:11,300 --> 00:50:13,665
I've come to meet
Dr Susan Blackmore,

577
00:50:13,700 --> 00:50:20,465
who believes that memes are the key to understanding
everything about what we say and do and think.

578
00:50:20,500 --> 00:50:25,740
Memes are any kind of information that's copied from
person to person, so when I am speaking to you now,

579
00:50:25,775 --> 00:50:28,465
I might be telling you a story,
or a joke,

580
00:50:28,500 --> 00:50:32,740
or I could sing you a song, and if
you then pass that on, it's a meme,

581
00:50:32,775 --> 00:50:35,357
and it can go on
to infect loads of other people.

582
00:50:35,392 --> 00:50:37,905
So how are memes
part of evolutionary theory?

583
00:50:37,940 --> 00:50:41,545
The idea of memes comes straight
out of universal Darwinism.

584
00:50:41,580 --> 00:50:47,700
It applies to anything where information
is copied with variation and selection.

585
00:50:47,735 --> 00:50:51,140
Memes are competing to use
our brains to get themselves copied.

586
00:50:51,175 --> 00:50:53,797
Invert the normal way
you think about the world.

587
00:50:53,832 --> 00:50:56,385
We, as humans,
feel we are doing the selecting,

588
00:50:56,420 --> 00:51:00,020
but from the meme's point of view,
they're getting us to copy them.

589
00:51:00,055 --> 00:51:02,825
So do you mean
we are colonised by our memes?

590
00:51:02,860 --> 00:51:05,985
Yeah, that's exactly the right word.
They colonise us.

591
00:51:06,020 --> 00:51:09,505
I mean, you could say that they're
parasites and parasitizing us,

592
00:51:09,540 --> 00:51:13,465
but in a way that gives the wrong impression
- there's a whole range of memes,

593
00:51:13,500 --> 00:51:18,660
from the valuable and wonderful memes that
make up our culture, our science and arts,

594
00:51:18,695 --> 00:51:21,665
to the other end where
you have all the viral memes -

595
00:51:21,700 --> 00:51:26,625
internet viruses, chain letters and religions,
things that exploit our brains and aren't true.

596
00:51:26,660 --> 00:51:33,700
The memes that have colonised us through our life
have given rise to this great story that I'm in here,

597
00:51:33,735 --> 00:51:37,700
I'm in control of my life, and
I would say the me that I think I am

598
00:51:37,735 --> 00:51:40,220
is to that extent an illusion.

599
00:51:44,060 --> 00:51:48,505
If true,
the theory of memes is devastating.

600
00:51:48,540 --> 00:51:52,640
Ultra-Darwinists
say that everything is an illusion -

601
00:51:52,675 --> 00:51:56,740
and this includes our sense of self,
and all our beliefs.

602
00:52:01,860 --> 00:52:08,745
If our entire mental world is a product
of a lifetime of meme colonisation,

603
00:52:08,780 --> 00:52:14,260
that means I believe in God because I have
been colonised by the Christianity meme.

604
00:52:17,060 --> 00:52:22,380
In other words, I'm deluded,
and therefore God is not real.

605
00:52:24,860 --> 00:52:29,060
But I can't see how
the theory of memes can be true.

606
00:52:29,095 --> 00:52:33,260
There's a fundamental flaw
at the heart of the theory.

607
00:52:33,295 --> 00:52:36,665
Consider this -
I also believe in evolution.

608
00:52:36,700 --> 00:52:44,300
Doesn't that mean that I have also been
colonised by the theory of evolution meme?

609
00:52:44,335 --> 00:52:49,340
How can I trust this meme to be
any more true than any other meme?

610
00:52:57,420 --> 00:53:00,305
This may sound like clever wordplay,

611
00:53:00,340 --> 00:53:05,980
but this is a philosophical problem that confronts
anyone who believes in the theory of memes.

612
00:53:06,015 --> 00:53:11,025
You see, science requires truth
to be objective.

613
00:53:11,060 --> 00:53:14,860
It requires benchmarks
to decide between what is true,

614
00:53:14,895 --> 00:53:16,305
and what is not true.

615
00:53:16,340 --> 00:53:20,880
But with ultra-Darwinism,
there can be no benchmark,

616
00:53:20,915 --> 00:53:25,385
because all that matters
is which memes survive.

617
00:53:25,420 --> 00:53:29,580
And their survival
has nothing to do with their truth.

618
00:53:33,260 --> 00:53:36,380
As one atheist philosopher put it,

619
00:53:36,415 --> 00:53:37,785
"Evolution does not care

620
00:53:37,820 --> 00:53:41,025
"whether most
of our beliefs are true.

621
00:53:41,060 --> 00:53:45,780
"Like Rhett Butler in the movie,
it just doesn't give a damn. "

622
00:53:51,740 --> 00:53:55,225
In undermining
the objectivity of truth,

623
00:53:55,260 --> 00:53:58,745
ultra-Darwinism
not only threatens the truth of God,

624
00:53:58,780 --> 00:54:04,540
it inadvertently also destroys the
truth of the theory of evolution itself.

625
00:54:06,020 --> 00:54:09,945
Although the theory of memes
has been around for some time,

626
00:54:09,980 --> 00:54:14,660
ultra-Darwinists have been unable to
answer this philosophical problem.

627
00:54:14,695 --> 00:54:18,460
The irony being that having
fatally undermined itself,

628
00:54:18,495 --> 00:54:22,637
ultra-Darwinism
cannot destroy our sense of self,

629
00:54:22,672 --> 00:54:26,780
threaten ethics,
and it cannot kill the idea of God.

630
00:54:38,820 --> 00:54:44,505
Let's be clear, I remain an ardent supporter
of Darwin and his theory of evolution.

631
00:54:44,540 --> 00:54:52,420
My issue is only against ultra-Darwinism, the
attempt to use the theory to explain everything.

632
00:54:52,455 --> 00:54:57,460
And you don't have to believe in God to
see the dangers of such an enterprise.

633
00:55:00,620 --> 00:55:05,220
The latest research into evolution
is a reminder that all science,

634
00:55:05,255 --> 00:55:08,697
even the theory of evolution,
is provisional.

635
00:55:08,732 --> 00:55:12,105
Darwin's theory
may not be the whole story.

636
00:55:12,140 --> 00:55:17,340
And, indeed, being but a chapter,
it cannot expect to explain away God.

637
00:55:23,740 --> 00:55:27,460
'I'm in London Zoo to meet
one of the world's most respected

638
00:55:27,495 --> 00:55:31,825
'evolutionary paleobiologists,
Simon Conway Morris.

639
00:55:31,860 --> 00:55:36,680
'His research explores how
life forms with wholly independent

640
00:55:36,715 --> 00:55:41,500
'evolutionary paths can produce
such remarkably similar results. '

641
00:55:41,535 --> 00:55:43,225
We humans are cultural,

642
00:55:43,260 --> 00:55:47,220
and we have music, but it so turns
out that many animals have music.

643
00:55:47,255 --> 00:55:48,665
Not only that -

644
00:55:48,700 --> 00:55:52,380
the sort of music they have is
similar, in many respects, to ours.

645
00:55:52,415 --> 00:55:54,625
Some birds even do drumming,
for example.

646
00:55:54,660 --> 00:55:58,620
But more specifically, they have
harmony and melody, they have invention,

647
00:55:58,655 --> 00:56:00,705
they even have cultures
in music where,

648
00:56:00,740 --> 00:56:03,945
for example,
in the oceans, whales can swap songs.

649
00:56:03,980 --> 00:56:07,820
Now, supposing that there
is a universal music out there,

650
00:56:07,855 --> 00:56:11,660
then think of evolution
as more like a search engine,

651
00:56:11,695 --> 00:56:14,025
and the reason why
the music sounds the same

652
00:56:14,060 --> 00:56:17,980
is because it is actually discovering
something which, arguably,

653
00:56:18,015 --> 00:56:22,117
is even pre-existing,
and that suggests, yes, evolution,

654
00:56:22,152 --> 00:56:26,220
the algorithm is Darwinian,
but there are other realities,

655
00:56:26,255 --> 00:56:28,940
and the fact that music
is discovered in this way

656
00:56:28,975 --> 00:56:31,225
suggests that
there is more to play for,

657
00:56:31,260 --> 00:56:36,700
that we've hardly begun to understand
who we are and why we're here.

658
00:56:36,735 --> 00:56:39,420
do you think that
evolution is still true?

659
00:56:39,455 --> 00:56:40,865
Evolution is true,

660
00:56:40,900 --> 00:56:45,585
the question is not that, it's, "Is
evolution, as a theory, complete?"

661
00:56:45,620 --> 00:56:50,220
Now, if you think of other sciences, go back
to the time of physics and the time of Newton,

662
00:56:50,255 --> 00:56:52,665
they thought
they'd solved everything.

663
00:56:52,700 --> 00:56:55,785
But, of course, in physics
along came general relativity,

664
00:56:55,820 --> 00:57:01,800
along came quantum mechanics, and I strongly suspect
that, yes, evolution is true, so far as it goes,

665
00:57:01,835 --> 00:57:07,780
but we are very much dealing with unfinished business,
and that means that it's like any other science.

666
00:57:11,740 --> 00:57:16,105
If science is inherently
open-ended and provisional,

667
00:57:16,140 --> 00:57:20,620
how can a scientific theory
like evolution possibly kill God?

668
00:57:24,420 --> 00:57:29,980
The mainstream Christian view of God
was never at odds with Darwin.

669
00:57:32,180 --> 00:57:38,820
The conflict was contrived by
an unorthodox strand of my faith -

670
00:57:38,855 --> 00:57:40,825
creationism.

671
00:57:40,860 --> 00:57:46,780
It was aggravated by
an unorthodox strand of Darwinism -

672
00:57:46,815 --> 00:57:48,825
ultra-Darwinism.

673
00:57:48,860 --> 00:57:54,140
So, for me, there is no conflict
between Darwin's theory

674
00:57:54,175 --> 00:57:55,260
and belief in God.

675
00:57:56,620 --> 00:58:04,420
Indeed, the theory of evolution even helps to stop
my understanding of God from becoming too domestic,

676
00:58:04,455 --> 00:58:06,860
too cosy, too small.

677
00:58:12,660 --> 00:58:14,745
Darwin hated religious controversy,

678
00:58:14,780 --> 00:58:18,780
and he would have been dismayed at the
events that have transpired in his name.

679
00:58:18,815 --> 00:58:22,677
His contribution to science
remains one of the greatest ever.

680
00:58:22,712 --> 00:58:26,540
Let's just accept it, and stop
using it to attack religion.

681
00:58:26,575 --> 00:58:29,500
It's time to let
Darwin rest in peace.

682
00:59:00,620 --> 00:59:03,620
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

683
00:59:03,655 --> 00:59:06,620
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