Special People

Professor Colin Blakemore is apparently perturbed that half of Americans and a third of Britons believe that God created our species in its current form. But, as Blakemore himself admits, there is no specific scientific ground on which to insist that this is not the case.

Aardvarks may be descended from anchovies or vice versa. If so, then that is of purely academic interest, though none the worse for that. But what is of moral importance is the descent of the human species from any other, as it were, specific species. And no proof of that has ever been found, though certainly not for want of trying.

Blakemore maintains that science is that one discovery away from killing off religion altogether. Of course, that is not the case. But in any event, science has been that one discovery away for quite a while, and shows no sign at all of ever making it. The time and money involved would far or usefully be expended elsewhere.

Until such time as that proof turns up, it remains perfectly within the bounds of existing scientific knowledge to believe in the direct creation of the first man from inanimate matter and of the first woman from out of the first man, so that human being belong in a wholly different moral category from the beasts of the fields, or the birds of the air, or the fish of the sea. Blakemore freely admits that he cannot “yet” know this to be incorrect.