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Why is the theory of evolution still resisted by so many despite 150 years of scientific evidence?  Is it being hijacked for ideological purposes?  What did Darwin believe?

Denis Alexander believes that the scientific community needs to ask itself some hard questions as to why the teaching of evolution in Britain still fails to convince a surprisingly large slice of the population.  A recent UK survey showed that half the population are skeptical about Darwinian evolution.  Could it be that evolution is still viewed more as a philosophy or ideology than as a biological theory? 

 

In the year of his double anniversary, we are reminded that Charles Darwin’s theory has been one of the most ideologically abused theories in the history of science. Since 1859 it has been used in attempts to support socialism, capitalism, eugenics, theism, racism, militarism and atheism. It has been vilified by creationists on one hand, whilst being invested with an anti-God rhetoric by ‘new atheists’ on the other.

 

Darwin himself was not at all interested in the ideological uses of his theory, and was much more at home with his barnacles and worms in Down House.  This lecture aims to rescue Darwin from the clutches of the various ideologies and celebrate him as the great naturalist that he was.  Though Darwin moved in his life from theism through deism to agnosticism, he saw no grounds for any inherent incompatibility between evolution and Christian faith.

Dr Alexander believes scientists and teachers have a hard task ahead, to knock the ideological barnacles off the theory, and to present evolution as simply the fascinating best explanation that we have for the origins of biological diversity, and no more.

 

Dr Denis Alexander is the Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. Dr Alexander was previously Chairman of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, where his most recent research interests focused on oncology and immunology. Prior to that Dr Alexander was at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London (now Cancer Research UK), and spent 15 years developing university departments and laboratories overseas, latterly as Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where he helped to establish the National Unit of Human Genetics. Dr Alexander was initially an Open Scholar at Oxford reading Biochemistry, before obtaining a PhD in Neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

 

Dr Alexander writes, lectures and broadcasts widely in the field of science and religion. Since 1992 he has been Editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief, and currently serves on the National Committee of Christians in Science and as a member of the International Society for Science and Religion.