"Sunday Herald Sun" [Australia] January 27, 2002, Sunday

SECTION: EXTRA; Pg. 67
LENGTH: 716 words

Debate over our origins is still evolving
Bryan Patterson

Darwinian man, although well behaved, is really but a monkey shaved
-- Gilbert and Sullivan

CHARLES Darwin knew his ideas on evolution were explosive.

The conservative squire's son, destined to serve the church, said 
publishing his views on natural selection was like "confessing to a murder".

No wonder the world can sometimes still seem divided between those who 
think Darwinism explains everything and those who believe it can explain 
nothing.

Both extreme views seem fundamentally and deeply flawed. The important 
debate -- whether the theories on evolution can provide answers to why we 
exist -- possibly lie in sensible dialogue between science and spirituality.

Scientists have traditionally rejected creationist critics of Darwin 
because they lacked legitimate educational credentials and used 
questionable data. But some scientists have recently cast doubt on parts of 
the evolutionary theory.

For example, biochemist Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, says 
Darwinian theory is unable to account for the origin of highly complex 
building blocks of life. His theory is that complex cell life was somehow 
"designed".

Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London, recently 
told an Australian audience that there was a limit to what genetics could 
tell us about "what it means to be human".

"Evolution is like all other sciences. It tells us everything we want to 
know about ourselves apart from the interesting stuff."

Professor Jones noted that humans share 98.8 per cent of DNA with chimpanzees.

But he said humans fall into a minute, closed group. We are the primate 
that did not change. We have spread all over the world, but our biology is 
mostly unchanged.

"The genetic difference between the Aboriginal population and that of 
Iceland is less than the genetic difference between two groups of 
chimpanzees living 30 miles apart of West Africa," he said.

Darwin's cousin scientist Francis Galton was worried that human evolution 
was in decline and we were an ancient society that had allowed ourselves, 
by our own foolishness, to head downhill.

He worried that we would eventually evolve to a monkey-like state.

But after the September 11 attacks, Darwinian author Steven Jay Gould 
wrote: "The patterns of history mix decency and depravity in equal measure."

People often assumed therefore, Gould said, that society must be made up of 
decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But he said the assumption was 
wrong.

Instead, "good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to 
one".

Professor Jones has warned of the rise of "a kind of new creationism, a 
kind of infantile Darwinism".

While saying he thought the traditional creationists were "on a losing 
wicket because the evidence against them is overwhelming", he said there 
was "an even more pernicious kind of neocreationism" that stated Darwinism 
could explain everything including our sense of good and evil.

"Evolution is only a science. It does not tell us much about ourselves as 
uniquely human."

If anything evolves, it is science.

ABOUT 400BC, Democritus likened the universe to a series of little balls 
colliding by chance.

"It is all atoms and space. All else is an impression of the senses," he 
said. Democritus's view that the planets, solar systems, atoms and 
molecules were helpless slaves to random forces was adopted as truth.

Charles Darwin cautiously theorised that nature was not made perfect, but 
was evolving. Another "truth" was adopted by many.

But Darwin never said his evolution theory proved God did not exist.

Even if Adam and Eve were not placed on Earth by the hand of God, that is 
not to say the grand design of evolution is not the work of a divine power.

Religious writer Aubrey Moore noted not long after Darwinism appeared: 
"Under the disguise of a foe, it did the work of a friend. It has conferred 
upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing us that we 
must choose between two alternatives; either God is everywhere present in 
nature, or he is nowhere."

Australian biologist and polymath Charles Birch wrote that Darwin proved 
our roots were in nature, "yet our branches reach into the heavens".

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