Out of the Blue

The earliest song that I recall singing was with a group of other schoolchildren when about seven years old. We stood behind a piano while the teacher played the tune to an Anglican hymn from 1848 while we belted out the words, which went something like this:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small…

Innocent and happy in our praise of God’s creation, we sang while looking at the colourful pictures stuck to the back of the piano, which showed God’s creation in all of its wonderful variety, from flowers to mountains to elephants. Each picture confirmed the message of the song for me. But as the years passed, I became aware of different songs, and I learnt of an alternative idea to God’s creation, which my home country continually promoted and affirmed. Consequently, most British children grow up not knowing that God exists and bereft of a Christian faith that once had been known to their ancestors.

“If Evolution Is True, Why Is Everything Complete?”

Nine years later, in a 6th form Geology lesson, I sat with a friend as we considered a teacher’s Darwinian opinion. We had recently been on a geology field trip to Swanage, Dorset in October 1974, which had involved visiting sites of geological interest, such as walking on a wave-cut platform and excavating brachiopods and ammonites from a large quarry. When the class had finished, I walked up to the side of the teacher’s large wooden desk and asked him: “If evolution is true, why is everything complete and not continually evolving?” I was thinking of the surrounding environment; the grass, flowers, and trees looked to be fully formed, as did the birds in the sky and the animals on the ground. Micro-evolution (adaptation to the environment) was not in question, but rather macro-evolution (one species evolving into another), for which I saw no evidence. I have forgotten his exact words, but I think the gist of his reply was that evolution went in bursts of activity, and we were now in a dormant stage. I was not entirely convinced, but did not see how I could argue with it, so I left it at that.

I would not return to the topic for forty years, and only then did it finally occur to me to read the source material, Darwin’s The Origin of Species. By this time I had finished reading Paul Johnson’s biography of Charles Darwin, which allayed my concerns about the claims of evolutionary theory, which I no longer found quite so intimidating. It is hard to explain why, but it might have had something to do with knowing more about Darwin, whom I came to perceive as less of a formidable intellect to more of a flawed character. Darwin’s popular theory had for me become an obstacle to a deeper faith for the simple reason that the argument presented for man’s evolution was incompatible with faith in God’s creation as revealed in the Bible, and in particular with regard to the first line in the book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”

I was aware of the idea of theistic evolution, but suspected that this was an unsatisfactory compromise, which, like weeds around a flower, inhibited the growth of a deeper faith. For me, Darwinism was a larger stumbling block; the only way I could see to overcome it was to read Darwin directly, and not only rely on what others had written about him. What a revelation it was! It became clear that his theory was based more upon conjecture than facts. For example, I could find no evidence to support his claim that transitional fossil forms would one day be found underneath the world’s oceans. None have yet been discovered, despite all the advances in the science of oceanography.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is assumed to be historically correct, not only because of the claims made by persuasive media personalities like David Attenborough, narrator and documentary editor of wildlife BBC television programmes, viewed by hundreds of millions of people around the world; but because evolution can seem to be compelling. In the Galapagos Islands, Darwin observed that the beaks of finches varied according to the type of fauna on any particular island. What Darwin observed was an instance of micro-evolution, which explains how animals can successfully adapt to their surroundings over a period of time. What this does not prove, however, is the claim that one species can become another species. A finch cannot become a seagull.

“Deluded by Darwinism”

Karl Marx famously wrote that Darwin’s theory was very helpful in promoting his own atheistic ideas: “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.” Marx wrote this after the first edition was published in London in 1859 with a title so controversial that it would be all but impossible for it to be published today:  The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This title provides a hint of why Darwinism appealed to exponents of the world’s more extreme 20th century political ideologies, especially eugenics.

Ninety-one years later, on 12^th August, 1950, Pope Pius XII promulgated an encyclical entitled Humani Generis (“On Certain False Opinions”). In paragraph 5, two subjects that we have previously discussed are concisely brought together:

If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principal trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that Evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain in the natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.

One spring afternoon, possibly in 2008, I ventured into a bookshop adjacent to Westminster Cathedral in Victoria, London, and unexpectedly found a book entitled Deluded by Darwinism by Martin Down, a Church of England vicar. It was the first time I had read a plausible account contrary to the widely accepted idea of evolutionary theory. I found his assessment of the evidence against Darwin’s theory to be compelling. Had I not chosen to read this book, I might have continued to accept the ideas of contemporary liberal culture so often typified by unthinking conformity to prevailing fashion.

This inspired me to read Johnson’s biography of Darwin, which revealed a man all too human, rather than the intellectual colossus commonly presented. My investigation continued by learning more about Darwin’s journey around the world on board The Beagle from 1831-1836, and then by reading The Origin of Species itself.

I knew evolutionary theory had to be tackled if I were ever going to find a deeper faith, which is why my initial enquiry began with some trepidation. I perceived a danger in risking what little faith I still had by reading Darwin. This concern disappeared when I realised that evolutionary theory was fatally flawed. Instead, this facilitated my conversion, and enabled me to find a deeper and stronger faith in God and His creation.

One evening, after praying a Rosary with a family of traditional Catholics at a farm in Cornwall, my wife [Mary] and I witnessed an event that I first had an inkling of happening almost two and half years before. When waking from sleep one morning, an inner voice informed me that there were 122 weeks left. I had no idea what this meant, but I never doubted that it would be something one might call positive rather than negative. Weeks before, my wife said that she had had a dream of seeing a white Cross in the night sky. I asked her whether I was with her. “I think so”, she replied. She insists, however, that her reply was “you were on my left”, so our accounts differ in some small details, but not in the fact of the event itself.

At the time of this Rosary, I expected something to take place, but I thought that whatever occurred would not be just for me, but a public event. I believed that this might have some connection with the hundredth anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima on 13th October, 1917, when the widely reported Miracle of the Sun was witnessed by seventy thousand people and published in the local newspaper with photographs of this miraculous event. For those unfamiliar with the story, three shepherd children were chosen by God to receive apparitions and revelations from the Virgin Mary.

A Vision of Our Lady and the Cross

In Cornwall, one hundred years later, we had just finished praying the Rosary, probably about 8.45 p.m. Mary and I were the first to leave the farmhouse. Mary noticed what we took to be a bright full moon in the night sky. Clouds drifted past, occasionally obscuring the view of the moon. We both stood in silent anticipation waiting to see the moon without any clouds. We stood on either side of the car and waited for the clouds to pass by. But the moment the moon was in the clear, I saw not the moon above, but a massive brilliant white Cross directly in front of me. I stood transfixed and fully absorbed in examining the Cross in greater detail. It appeared to be about fifteen feet high and ten feet across and about twenty feet away. A statue of the Virgin Mary was situated beside the Cross in a grotto. I was intrigued to see the surprising shape of the horizontal part of the Cross; my immediate impression was that of a beam which had been planed. I remained rooted to the spot and absorbed every detail of the miracle which appeared before me. I then realised that the base of Cross was in mid-air, perhaps a yard off the ground.

Then after what may have been several minutes, I heard Mary exclaim something and looked round to see that she had clasped the roof of the car for support. I assumed that she had seen what I had, but I later learnt that she had seen a Cross too, but smaller and where we had expected the moon to be. I turned back to return to my own vision, but I was dismayed that it had vanished. Shortly afterward, the rest of the Rosary group was leaving the farmhouse. We walked back toward them and told them what had happened, but it was difficult to fully convey the import of what we had just witnessed. Perhaps a scene from The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare best expresses the sort of joy or wonder we had both experienced:

They seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes: there was speech in the dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed.

Mary and I spoke to each other several days afterward about what had happened, but thereafter forgot about this event for at least a year. Why we both experienced this “joint amnesia,” I do not know, but it may have been God’s grace. It may not have been wise to talk about the vision at the time in case of pride or the possibility of people assuming it was. On reflection, however, I believe that the Cross I saw was mine. This was the Cross that I had to pick up and carry if I wanted to gain heaven. A lifetime of sins, errors, cowardice, and lack of faith resulted in the enormous bright white Cross I saw in front of me in October 2017. With God’s grace I could carry it, but it would be difficult; at the time of this writing, I can say with certainty that it is not easy. Nevertheless, I hope and pray that I can carry this Cross to my final destination and thank God for his mercy before finally realising his justice.