Evolution can apparently be a rather depressing prospect for believers, which is puzzling given the narratives it seeks to replace. One might think that being the wondrously complex product of billions of years of natural selection would be preferable to having been fashioned from dust, cursed with a sinful nature, and condemned to a life of toil. Yet, for some believers, the latter story seems somehow more comforting.

We are, of course, referring to Genesis 3, the story of the Fall, in which God condemns humanity for eating fruit from a tree that need not have been placed there to begin with. Yet because Adam “listened to his wife” and ate the forbidden fruit anyway, God pronounces his punishment:

Cursed is the ground because of you;

    through painful toil you will eat food from it

    all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

    and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow

    you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

    since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

    and to dust you will return. (Gen. 3:17-19)

God forbid that science should spoil such an uplifting story. And the theological portrait of humanity only grows darker from there. If Genesis has not sufficiently depressed you, there is always St. Paul or St. Augustine to remind you of your innate depravity. In every case, the underlying message is remarkably consistent: human beings are fallen, miserable sinners, and our only hope of redemption lies in our abject submission to a deity that, according to the story, made us this way in the first place.

Yet, for all of that, it is the scientific worldview that supposedly gets people down. What about the fact that we are composed of the same fundamental matter as everything else in the cosmos—that we are, quite literally, one with the universe? Meh. We’d rather believe we were whipped up from a pile of dirt. 

What about the fact that our shared DNA reveals that all life is intimately connected—that every species is part of the same vast, branching family? Whatever. We’d rather believe that humanity stands apart from the rest of nature, granted dominion over it by divine decree. 

Believers may shrug off these extraordinary scientific revelations of unity, but it is worth noting that many scientists have responded to them in precisely the opposite way, developing a profound sense of awe—and, at times, something approaching reverence—for nature and the cosmos itself. Albert Einstein, for example, while rejecting orthodox religion and anthropomorphic gods, referred to himself as a “deeply religious nonbeliever” in precisely this sense. Science can clearly inspire in those who study it a sense of wonder, connection, and gratitude for the extraordinary, improbable, and fleeting gift of existence. 

So what are we better off believing? That we were fashioned from dust, corrupted by nature, condemned to toil, and promised happiness only in some distant heavenly realm? Or that we are wonderfully complex manifestations of nature, intimately related to every living thing around us, capable of savoring life’s pleasures without the fear of divine retribution?  

The latter view may seem less comforting to some, but it strikes me as infinitely more wondrous (and accurate). We are temporary manifestations of the universe, composed of the same ancient matter and governed by the same laws as everything around us. And when our brief existence comes to an end, there is no need to imagine that we are going somewhere else. As Einstein is often quoted as saying, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

But perhaps the most poetic expression of the uplifting capacity of science was written by the very man who reputedly robbed humanity of all hope: Charles Darwin. In the concluding passage of On the Origin of Species, Darwin offered not despair, but an inspiring and expansive vision of nature:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

It’s a beautiful picture, and a beautiful thought. More importantly, it makes a mockery of the notion that religion is necessary to furnish our lives with meaning, purpose, and love. I have always found that claim deeply suspect. Richard Dawkins, responding to the suggestion that his writings on evolution leave readers sinking into existential despair, put it rather well:

Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life’s hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don’t; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions. To accuse science of robbing life of the warmth that makes it worth living is so preposterously mistaken, so diametrically opposite to my own feelings and those of most working scientists, I am almost driven to the despair of which I am wrongly suspected.

I suspect that the religious aversion to evolution is, at least in part, an emotional ploy to keep religion relevant. Believers and nonbelievers, after all, live remarkably similar lives, confronting the same problems and dilemmas and pursuing the same fundamental human needs for connection, meaning, and purpose. Yet the insistence that science leaves us spiritually impoverished—that it cannot provide the perspective or inspiration necessary for a good and meaningful life—is an idea long overdue for retirement.

Sources

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026.

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. 150th Anniversary ed. Introduction by Julian Huxley. New York: Signet, 2003.