Let me be open. I think that evolution is a fact and that Darwinism rules triumphant. Natural selection is not simply an important mechanism. It is the only significant cause of permanent organic change. I stand somewhere to the right of Archdeacon Paley on adaptation and design. I see purpose and function everywhere. I am an ardent naturalist and an enthusiastic reductionist, and those who disagree with me are wimps. I think that everything applies to humans, thought and action, and that sociobiology is the best thing to happen to the social sciences in the last century. The kindest thing that can be said for those who disagree – Marxists, feminists, constructivists, and fellow travellers – is that they speak from ignorance. Perhaps their genes make them do it.

Yet, all of this said, I cannot for the life of me see why so many – Darwinians and Christians alike – think that such a position as mine implies an immediate and emphatically negative response to the question I have posed in my title. Why should the devil have all the good tunes? Why should the devil have all the good science and philosophy? Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas would be appalled at such a presumption, and we should feel the same way. It may indeed be the case that a Darwinian cannot be a Christian, but this is something to be decided only after one has looked at the two systems and worked through their points of possible conflict and dispute.