Comment

The British Council, which has always laid out good wine and food when they’ve invited me to read from one of my books, does other useful things. Among their recent acts is a survey of the opinions of 12,000 people in 20 countries, including India, America, Britain, Mexico, Russia and Argentina as to the teaching of the theories of creation. ‘What should be taught?’ was the question.

People were asked whether theories other than Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species should be on school syllabuses.

In all the countries polled, there was support for the teaching of evolution and other ‘theories’ of creation. Most of those questioned in the Christian world, in differing proportions in different countries, believed that the story of creation as told in Genesis in the Bible ought to be taught alongside the theory of evolution. That would mean that pupils, Christians and others would have to make up their own minds, to decide between the scientific ideas of evolutionary theory and the story of Adam and Eve and the creation by God of the universe, the earth and all life in six days.

In Britain, nominally a Christian country, most people don’t believe in the literal truth of Genesis. There is undoubtedly a tiny minority of Jews and Catholics and perhaps some fundamentalist sects who take the biblical myth of the creation and of the Garden of Eden and man’s temptation and fall on tasting the forbidden fruit as a literal truth.

A more enlightened version gives the creation myth a metaphorical status. In this avatar the ‘sin’ of Adam is not the taste of an apple but the act of sex and procreation, a defiance of the singularity of God as the creator. If humans can perpetrate themselves through sex then God becomes redundant and time and death become a reality.

Though I have no research evidence for this, I feel that of the thousand people from Britain who were questioned in this poll, most would go for the metaphorical interpretation of the biblical story and would not see it, as it is seen in the bible belt of the USA, as the true alternative to Darwinian evolution. Britain would make a distinction between the latter as science and the biblical story as religion, a dedication and faith that may embrace ritual and provide solace but does not displace explanation or scientific reasoning.

It was not so in Argentina and Mexico. Even though the sample questioned in these countries said they would allow the teaching of Darwinian evolution in schools, they overwhelmingly supported the Catholic belief that God created life and all living creatures. Again, without any scientific evidence, I can vouch for the fact that the Indian statistical sample was all in favour of teaching many truths but believing literally in only the scientific one.

In college in India, I had to suffer the, for me, tedious and smelly discipline of Biology for the first year. My teachers, devout and dedicated Brahmins, were enthusiastic about evolutionary theory. The lecture halls and labs were plastered with anatomical charts demonstrating the growth of backbones and with a large poster display of the ascent of man in several steps from ape-like ancestors. This chart was, predictably, replete with graffiti which labelled each of the apes with the name of one of our professors.

Whereas the Christian creation myth is in direct conflict with Darwinism and caused poor Charles himself great anguish in his relationship with his devout Christian wife, the Hindu idea of creation does not conflict in the same way.

In the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara, the question of how the Universe was created becomes nonsensical or at least otiose, because the universe itself is an appearance and not the reality. It is avidya or maya that makes the universe and the separateness of all things from Brahman which is the ultimate reality. And that must apply to Darwinism too.