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the program. Hello the evolutionary biologist the late Stephen J. Gould argued that if you re-ran the tape of evolutionary history, an entirely different set of creatures will emerge.

Man wouldn't exist because the multitude of random changes that resulted in us would never be repeated in exactly the same way.

Others disagree, arguing that there's a pattern that points to some kind of direction, even perhaps a design,

a sense that some things are ordained to be.

Who were the original proponents of the idea of a grand design?

Were they deliberately setting out to find a scientific theory that could sit alongside

religious faith? On the other hand, can the

concept of contingency or the randomness of evolution be compatible with the

pattern we see or with a belief in God? With me a Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University,

and author of The Crucible of Creation, The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals.

Sandy Knapp, botanist at the Natural History Museum, and John Brooke,

Andres Idras Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University.

Simon Connolly Morris, can you set out the range of arguments as it were to sort of headline the program

surrounding the issue of design?

...