A theory of evolution, at least as it applies solely to plants and animals, is quite separate from human life and human concerns. It is only when human life is itself seen as part of the totality of life, as having itself evolved from non-human predecessors, that such theories begin to exert force.

One objection to any theory of evolution is that it diminishes human life. That it makes monkeys of us. That it makes animals of us. That it takes away our unique humanity. Of course, it can be seen in that negative sense, but it could equally be said that the re-union of human life with natural life raises the status of natural life, rather than diminishes the status of human life. We can begin to see animals and plants as our own kin, as distant relatives in the great family of life.

In one sense, in any theory of evolution, humanity remains 'special' simply because these theories are propounded by humans and accepted or rejected by humans, with human interests at heart. Were whales or oak trees able to consider such theories, whales or oak trees would emerge as the subject of their special interest and concern.

Another objection to the theory of evolution is that, at least in the hands of Darwin, it portrayed the process of evolution as one of continual war between the creatures, as an unremitting competitive struggle for existence, the moral implications of which in human life could only be that it was right to be rapacious, aggressive, and murderous. The ethical message of Darwinism runs quite contrary to the ethical message of Christianity.

In the Idle Theory of evolution, however, this Darwinian struggle more or less entirely vanishes. In Idle Theory, the "struggle for existence" isn't a battle, but is simply tedious work. The creatures have to work to survive, not fight to survive. War, battle, conflict, and all the associated Darwinian impedimenta, have little place in Idle Theory. To the extent that the creatures get locked into "arms races", to that extent they endanger their survival. And to the extent that the creatures multiply without restriction, to that extent also they endanger their own survival. The ethics that emerges from Idle Theory is one which stresses cooperation, peace, reproductive restraint, quietism. It is an ethics which is much easier to reconcile with the ethical message of Christianity. Whereas Darwin saw in an tangled bank a ceaseless war, Idle theory sees peace, tranquillity, inactivity, play.

Another objection to the theory of evolution, and perhaps to science in general, is that it makes living creatures into soulless machines, that it mechanizes humanity, taking away from it every last trace of divine soul, of immortality. That it makes life cold and dead, so many specimens pinned and mounted in museum cabinets.

The response to this must be that, whatever else science has been successful in explaining, it has so far had little success in understanding life and living creatures - regardless of the great strides made in medicine and genetics over the past century. Life remains a puzzle to a science which largely deals in inert, dead matter. And the result is that we do not have a science of life, and in consequence we do not have a science of economics, or a science of ethics. Science simply doesn't have anything to say. Economics, ethics, and politics remain part of the disciplines of the humanities, not of science. If any complaint is to be raised against science, it should be that it tells us too little about life, that it offers no assistance.