Bio

John Hedley Brooke held the Andreas Idreos Chair of Science & Religion and Directorship of the Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxford University from 1999 to 2006. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Harris Manchester College Oxford, Honorary Professor of the History of Science at Lancaster University and, in 2007, was appointed "Distinguished Fellow" at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham.  He is currently President of the International Society for Science and Religion.  His books include Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge 1991) and (with Geoffrey Cantor) Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science & Religion (Edinburgh 1998). He has contributed to both The Cambridge Companion to Darwin and to The Cambridge Companion to the "Origin of Species".

Position statement on the issue

The implications of Darwin's theory of evolution for religious belief are as hotly debated today as they were in the years following the publication of his Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871).  The problems that Darwin's science raised for Christian theology have been discussed at great length in the intervening years. They include the challenge to a literal interpretation of the biblical creation narrative; the destruction of arguments for design in nature; the threat to human uniqueness; and the exclusion of supernatural agency when interpreting the history of life on Earth.  For these and other reasons, Darwinism has often been a platform on which to construct materialistic and atheistic worldviews, in deliberate opposition to religious traditions that have seen in nature evidence of divine power, direction and wisdom.  It is, however, a great mistake to imagine that the concepts of creation and evolution are mutually exclusive. Christian theologians in the nineteenth century were often receptive to Darwin's theory.  Among the more progressive religious thinkers, Darwin was believed to have provided a more sophisticated understanding of the process of creation, and advocates of theistic evolution were able to claim that Darwin's science provided a new resource for theological reflection on the extent of pain and suffering in the world. Darwin himself was never an atheist and once defined 'nature' as the 'laws ordained by God to govern the universe'. 

Given the vast literature on the subject and the fact that our scientific understanding is itself always changing, I do not think it wise to be dogmatic when considering the many hypotheses that have been advanced for the mechanism of evolutionary change. I believe, however, that advocates of "intelligent design" are misguided when they use this concept to attack neo-Darwinian models of evolution.  I also reject the argument that Darwinism entails atheism. As a historian of science, I recognise that the cultural meaning of scientific theories has never been  determined by science alone. The fact that apes and humans have a common ancestor does not mean there is nothing unique about humans. Our self-consciousness, free will and sense of moral responsibility remain in place and, as the great geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky observed, these human characteristics bring with them both a blessing and a curse, beautifully captured in the biblical story of the 'fall'. 

John Brooke/ March 2010