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God’s Biologist - a life of Alister Hardy

Reviewed by Colin Selby.

Sir Alister Hardy FRS was a distinguished Professor of Zoology at Oxford University. He was taught by Julian Huxley and numbered Richard Dawkins among his students. Alister Hardy founded and was the first director of the Religious Experience and Research Unit (RERU) which continues its work at the University of Wales at Lampeter as the Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC) (www.alisterhardyreligiousexperience.co.uk ).

David Hay is also a zoologist and worked with Hardy in the RERU. He is currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

Ever since Darwin published his ideas on evolution there has been a debate about the place of this theory in relation to the Bible and Christian belief. David Hay’s biography of Alister Hardy is a lucid description of one man’s lifelong struggle to bring careful observation of personal description of spiritual experiences to bear on the proposition that such spiritual experiences are possible because of an inherited potential which has evolved because of its survival value. Whatever our experience of the work of God in our lives, this book is a valuable example of one possible answer to the questions about how God does this re-creative work. This could also suggest a way to reconcile the rift between science and religious belief. There are useful indexes and an appendix on the work of the RERC.