Darwin and secularism

Charles Moore has written tentatively on the subject of Darwin, noting the propaganda value of Darwin for agressive secularists and promoting a book called "Darwin and God" by Nick Spencer, which aims to rescue Darwin from the culture war between secularists and Christians. This sentiment was expressed by Steve Jones on the recent BBC Radio 4 5-part series on Darwin, who wanted to retrieve Darwin the scientist from the ideology. Yet the culture war continues, and in mono-media Britain, where the BBC has 87% of the broadcasting market, the liberal secularists will fill the space with their own interpretation of Darwin's legacy.

The current celebration of Darwin by the BBC is part of this trend. Darwin is part of liberal hagiography. Darwinism is a kind of state cult, connected closely to the quasi-Bacchic cult of revolutionary overthrow, where worshippers revel at the destruction of an old way of ordering the world at the hands of a new revolutionary idea or political force.

The question still remains for Christianity, even Catholic Christianity, of how to accommodate Darwinism to Christian revelation, which is channelled partly through scripture. Newman's thesis about the development of Christian doctrine must be part of it. I suspect also that some of Darwin's thought can be decoupled from the prevailing materialist assumptions of the age; it is just that we are too trapped inside this perspective to be able to do it.