"He lost his faith with the help of a wasp." Thus Richard Dawkins, who has something of a reputation as a proselytizing atheist, refers to one of the observations of Charles Darwin. It's a striking image, but not as true as Dawkins would like to suggest.
Darwin is remembered for his thoughts on The Origin of Species. His theory about how animals and plants adapted themselves over time to particular environments and circumstances was not a new one, but the quantity of scientific research that underlay it meant that it had to be taken seriously. Darwin's thoughts about evolution were not one theory among many; they were the theory which fitted the facts most closely.
Darwin wrote from the standpoint of a Christian, and it is sad that some Christians have declared that "Satan himself is the originator of the concept of evolution." Initially, Darwin saw the intricate way in which species developed as a work set in motion by a benign and loving God. His opponents pointed to inconsistencies in his theories. They misrepresented them - Darwin never said, for instance, that human beings were descended from monkeys! And they found them incompatible with the account of Creation they read in their Bibles.
But the writers of the Bible knew of at least three stories of Creation, and tell us two of these in detail. The two accounts in the first chapters of Genesis are not descriptions of the mechanics of Creation. They are statements about God. In the first chapter, it is stressed that the sun, the moon, the birds and beasts, the days and the seasons are not objects of worship, as they were to the Egyptians or the Babylonians. It is God alone who is above all.
And in the tale of Adam, where the animals are created for companionship, the overriding theme is God's care for mankind and concern for our welfare. God's marvels are not the marvels of nature. God's marvels are our own capacity to react to the world around us, with awe, yes, but also with wisdom, love and compassion to the people we meet, see and learn about.
To the end of his life, Darwin was able to marvel at the wisdom of a God who had created a work that had evolved, on balance, in a good way. But then there were the wasps.
The ichneumon wasp stings caterpillars, not with the intention of killing them, but of paralysing them. She lays eggs inside their bodies, so that when they hatch, her larvae can eat fresh, live meat. Darwin wrote: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living body of caterpillars."
Dawkins infers from this that Darwin "lost his faith". But in fact, Darwin continued to look at the problem theologically, and to seek answers. And so should we.
The hymn which Cecil Frances Alexander wrote for her Sunday school children recounts how "all things bright and beautiful" were made by God. But if we use the word "good" in a moral sense, there is no such thing as "a good tree". Brightness and beauty are in the eye of the beholder, and so are goodness and compassion. The most beautiful of all butterflies, the most purple-headed of all mountains, cannot compare at all with the wonder of a kindly action, or the goodness of a loving heart. For it is in these that God is truly at work.
HD