In Depth:  Denis Alexander

When Richard Dawkins wrote that his discovery of evolution had enabled him to be an 'intellectually fulfilled atheist', many Christians believed him. But Dawkins's inference is, I think, misplaced.

There is a strong tradition of evangelical Christian scientists, of whom I am one, stretching in a long lineage back to many of Darwin's contemporaries, who are happy to absorb Darwinian evolutionary theory into the biblical doctrine of creation. This was the stance taken by several writers who contributed to the Funda-mentals (1910-15)1, it was the position taken by many of the IVF (now UCCF) evangelical leaders amongst whom I was nurtured as a student during the 1960s (Oliver Barclay, Sam Berry, Donald MacKay, Robert Boyd and many others)2 and it continues to be the perspective taken today by a large number of evangelical scientists.

Christian undergraduates are sometimes surprised to find that evangelicals on the teaching and research staff of their university are, more often than not, committed to the theory of evolution.

The same undergraduates may have been taught in their home churches that evolution is evil and atheistic. So how can these (apparently) Bible-believing academics hold to such pernicious ideas? Has the peer pressure of academia turned them away from Christian orthodoxy?