When Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, philosopher Michael Ruse was quoted as saying that the book "makes me embarrassed to be an atheist." What especially galls Ruse is Dawkins' pig-headed insistence that anyone who embraces the Darwinian account of evolution cannot remain a Christian.

Ruse is a noted philosopher at Florida State University, an atheist champion of evolution and Darwinism, and author of several critically acclaimed books including Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?

I've been reading Ruse's book, and in it he counters Dawkins' simple-minded argument that God has been proven irrelevant since chance and natural selection now constitute "the blind watchmaker." Ruse writes, "It still leaves open the option of God's designing at a distance. Perhaps God put His design into action through the medium of unbroken law. Perhaps a God who works in this way is superior to a God who has to intervene personally and miraculously."

But doesn't evolution contradict a literal reading of the first chapter of Genesis? Yes, but Ruse points out that there are only two groups of people who insist on reading Genesis in a close-mindedly literal way. The first group is ignorant fundamentalists. And the second group is ignorant atheists like Dawkins.

By contrast, Ruse shows that from earliest times thoughtful Christians like the church father Augustine read the creation account figuratively. And for nearly two thousand years the Catholic Church has followed in this tradition. Ruse adds that while Calvin was a bit more literal-minded than Luther, both leading reformers also allowed for non-literal understandings of creation. Indeed Calvin introduced his doctrine of "accommodation" in which he argued that the Bible is sometimes written in a form as to make itself intelligible to people who are not well educated and don't have a sophisticated understanding of science.

Ruse 's conclusion introduces subtleties that seem entirely beyond the capacity of Dawkins. "Is the Christian obligated to be a Darwinian?" Ruse answers no, but urges Christians to take evolutionary biology seriously because they don't want a Christianity practiced in the dark. "Is the Darwinian obligated to be a Christian?" Again, the answer is no but Ruse adds this advice: "Try to be understanding of those who are." Finally Ruse gets to the big one. "Can a Darwinian be a Christian?" To which he offers the resounding answer: "Absolutely!"