Programme 2: Life on Earth

If science and religion are at war then perhaps no individual has fuelled the conflict more than Charles Darwin with his theory of evolution. To what extent does it provide a comprehensive explanation for life that requires no further consideration of religion in the search for answers?

Darwin’s basic idea was that all of life came from one original cell and that over billions of years, after learning to reproduce, small changes in the daughter cells led to a series of differences emerging and those differences eventually produced the wide range of species, including human beings, that we see on earth today. Far more cells and resultant species emerged than can survive. Only the fittest and best adapted to their living conditions do so.

In the Western world, although many Christians have no difficulty accepting Darwinism along with their belief in a creator God, others find that the theory of evolution is a major threat to their religion. One reason given is that the story of creation in the Bible seems to tell a very different story. The conflict between science and religion is however largely centred in the West. Eastern religions do not specify a creation story in the same level of detail and so there is less with which to conflict.

But does evolution, and the science of genetics which followed it, truly conflict with the existence of a creator? Might those Christians who see a conflict with their creation story have misunderstood what that story was intended to communicate? Of far greater importance is the question of whether the science of biology demonstrates such wonder that it could only have been produced as a result of a creator intending it to be so?

Hear from scientists from both East and West and discover the wonder of life and the human body in particular. Follow the arguments as we explore the DNA code at the heart of life and be amazed at how it builds our bodies in such precise detail. Is science in the process of burying God or demonstrating that a creator’s involvement is obvious?