Darwin’s theory of evolution didn’t stop at animals and plants. According to J. David Pleins, professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University, California, Darwin came to believe that religion and morality evolve, like everything else in the natural world. The intriguing subject of The Evolving God is “the God instinct” – the idea that the human brain is hard-wired for religious feeling. Rejecting the simple story of Darwin as another of those agonised Victorians who “lost their faith”, Pleins presents instead a Darwin on a steady path to enlightenment, arriving at a place somewhere between the simple certainties of fundamentalist Christians and the hostility to religious belief of Richard Dawkins.When exploring the Brazilian rainforest in