Preparing for the Miraculous

132 eleven talksout the theory of evolution and thereby initiated a radicalshift in the conception humans had of themselves. This,like so much else in popular science, is a misconception. Itmight be said that Darwin was the midwife who, in 1859,presented the theory of evolution to the world, or that hewas the cause that all of a sudden the evolution theory becamethe focus of attention and consternation. For how toadmit that among our ancestors and those of Christ therehad been a monkey?In the first half of the 19th century theories of evolutionwere in the air. What was more, the great French biologistJean-Baptiste de Lamarck had formulated one that wasfully worked out and coherent, although not fully justified– which was not possible with the means at the disposal ofbiologists at the time (and even now). Secondly, Darwin’sown theory was far from fully justified scientifically. Henever touched on the origin of species, even though so proclaimingin the title of On the Origin of Species, could onlysketch the formation of species by natural selection, andhad not a clue about the inheritance of the natural characteristicsin animals, now called genetics.Darwin was also a recluse who did not undertake anylong-distance travels after his adventurous five-year voyageon the Beagle. The ones who did campaign to spreadhis ideas were his friends and admirers, most of them ardentfreethinkers with T.H. Huxley as their ringmaster.They enjoyed shocking the prim moralistic Victorian societyof their time with the new message: that all living beingsconsisted of nothing but matter, should be studied in theway physics studied material things, and that in the courseof the evolution everything had always developed from aprevious material something, like the primates from themonkeys and consequently the humans from the primates.The human became nothing but an animal, an evolved