I have just been sent a beautiful hardback edition of the Origin of Species from Penguin, which not only has a cover design by Damian Hirst but a blurb from him too. I don't rate his words much more highly than his art, but in this case they actually have something to tell us: they are the clearest possible example of the use of Darwin as a religious object.

I know that out in the creation/evolution wars on the net, "Darwinism" is a term used by people who don't understand evolutionary biology and who want to equate science with religion as alternate and competing ways of reaching the truth. I am not trying to do that. I think that science is a distinct mode of thought and practice and religion isn't and can turn almost anything to its purposes. So I want to use "Darwinism" as a term meaning what people who don't understand evolutionary biology think that it says, whether they're for it or against it. In this sense. Hirst is clearly a Darwinist.

"Darwin's idea, 'Evolution Through Natural Selection' actually explains the

meaning of life;" Hirst writes. He continues, spattering commas in his excitement: "it is the biggest single idea ever, its breadth and scope enormous, its means so perfectly economic, its capacity to shock and excite persist, to this day."

I don't want to draw attention to his rhythmic alternation between hyperbole and horseshit. That's common to all sorts of advertising prose. What's interesting is that the attributes of overwhelming power and perfection which he ascribes to natural selection are those which once would be applied to God, and, after God failed, were applied to Art. Hirst and his friends, if they are Artists, stand as a pretty final testimony to the failure of Art to connect us to transcendent truth; so what remains but science?

The connection is made quite explicit in the next section of Hirst's blurb:

Such emotion and passion over a search for essential truth is also the substance of Art, such belief and relevance its goal. The myriad ways of understanding and expressing the beauty of life are a constant inspiration. There's an infinite number of ways to get to the same point.

A scientific theory is being bent here here into doing something that it simply cannot manage to. Hirst's Darwinism has nothing to do with evolutionary biology. Natural selection doesn't and couldn't explain the meaning of life except to point out that death is essential to the process. Life is individual and the only measure of success that natural selection offers is posthumous: to have as many descendants as possible.

Hirst's encomium might make more sense if it were taken as praise of the book, rather than the theory of evolution by natural selection. The Origin is a splendid book, and Darwin was a very good writer. But that has nothing to do with the merit of his theory, which would be just as true if only Wallace had discovered it – and who reads Wallace today? But in this too it is an example of Darwinism – which is distinct from evolutionary biology – becoming a quasi-religious cult. The emulation of Darwin's heroic virtue and his passionate search for truth in science replaces the emulation of holy men and their search for truth in god.

Is this really progress? I think it might be or it would be if the practice of science could ever become as widespread as the practice of prayer. Behaving as scientists are supposed to do – looking humbly and devotedly for the truth wherever it may be found – is a morally good thing. But there's no reason to suppose that science ever will in fact become a mass pursuit. All the figures that we have suggest that it is a less and less popular career path. And treating Darwin, or any other scientist, as a wonder-worker just turns science into a priesthood. That doesn't do anyone any good, neither scientists nor the rest of us. Darwin was a good man and his theory was a great one. But believing it, even understanding it, won't make the goodness and the greatness rub off on the believers.

