By David Warren.

The universe is gratuitous, unforced, and unexpected. To be literal, it is a Gift, and in form, a substantial passing from the supernatural. We are sometimes astounded by this reality; other times enmired in the boredom of existence.

Whereas, in science, there is no Gift. Reality just happened. From the time we began to notice, it was just there.

Science presents itself as an explanation of things, as the analyst of material nature. But the existence in this universe, veritably on the earth - of life, of consciousness, of the conscience, &c - must at some point bring us into the presence of the miraculous.

To the Catholic, there is difficulty, not in understanding science in its claim to be the front line of reason. The Catholic conception of the universe as Gift is in contradiction to this. What is given did not (randomly or otherwise) happen. The Aristotelian sense of telos, of purpose, is instead tied up in everything that we know.

There is intention in the Gift - DIVINE intention - and without an instinct for the intention, there can be no understanding of things at all.

This is why reason and faith have been so perfectly allied, from the beginning of Christian tradition. It is why modern science "evolved" within our tradition, rather than within another; why the great scientific explorers have been, overwhelmingly, Christian (and mostly Catholic).

It is because of our supernatural understanding of the universe as Gift that we expect to find reason and consistency in things, for we would in Gift. What is before our senses will make sense. We knew this, and our faith in this insight would never fail us.

Modern science, especially in its recent developments, has abandoned the scientific enterprise. It has been separated from God. In its degeneration into materialist technology, it has been captured by "big government" and "big business." These, not the Church, are science's new masters.

A book just published by Fr. Martin Hilbert, A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, provides a rational approach to the Gift, once again. It gives an account of the disintegration of Darwinism, from its own very aggressively materialist beginnings.

We no longer need to believe the mythology that was built around Darwin himself, who was a materialist atheist from early youth, dreaming of the overthrow of religion by science, like Huxley and the rest of the evolutionist crew.

Fr. Hilbert, with the help of what is now extensive research from the Discovery Institute and elsewhere, takes us through this "anti-story" - the argument for evolution by natural selection - into the heart of absurdity.

By developments in microscopy and thought, we are now able to glimpse inside the living cell, at a complex world intelligently designed; and more deeply into genetic procedure than the nothing that Darwin's contemporaries knew.

The search for missing links and "trees of life" through fossil records has not worked out. Instead, the evolutionists are confronted by the Cambrian Explosion, and throughout history by species that simply enter and exit the biological record, without announcing themselves.

Creatures assigned a place in the chronological record millions of years ago turn up (without permission) in fishermen's nets. Techniques including "state of the art" Carbon-14 dating, which may seem to work, take us back only centuries, and give us no assurance that the "history of animals" is anything like what has been displayed in our museums.

Fr. Hilbert's book functions as a useful guide or overview of this state of play in biological science. He drops further hints over the edges: that, for instance, the "young earthers" have been winning arguments that they were expected to lose to sneering academics.

But his best service is in his survey of modern evolutionary defenses. For the materialist-atheists (both admitting and shyly concealing their beliefs) have not given up the fight, and do what they can to overthrow observers of the Gift...