Douthat has been doing some ruminating on Christianity and Darwin. The short version is that evolution’s greatest challenge to Christianity isn’t that it explains the origins of humans. Instead, the problem is the extent of violence and suffering inherent in the mechanism. Also, for any that put even symbolic weight on the Garden of Eden myth, the creative destruction of evolution precedes the ‘Fall’ of humanity.
I tend towards subversive readings of Eden, though not to the extent that I feel the need to write stories in which my protagonists constantly eat apples or travel to Earth-like planets to destroy their apparent utopias. That said, as was the case with David Plotz, I found that reading a good chunk of the Hebrew bible (and Revelations) was more than sufficient basis to completely undermine the idea that evil was something unique to fallen humans.
In any event, Douthat goes on to discuss how this gets handled in Christian fiction, notably by C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. First he quotes a reader summarizing later Tolkein writings:
Tolkien says that Morgoth -- the original Satanic figure responsible for the fall of the elves and (implicitly and off camera) the fall of humans -- imbued the physical world with a large part of his evil essence: "Just as Sauron concentrated his power in the One Ring, Morgoth dispersed his power into the very matter of Arda, thus 'the whole of Middle-Earth was Morgoth's Ring'". This explains why, from the elvish point of view, death is the "gift of men" because it gives them a ticket out of the fallen, Morgoth-tainted world. The problem with this from a orthodox Christian perspective is that death is supposed to be the punishment for the Fall and not part of the solution for the Fall.
Douthat provides the C.S. Lewis example:
C.S. Lewis, Tolkien's fellow Christian fantasist, developed this theme in The Magician's Nephew, by having Jadis, Queen of Charn (and the future White Witch) consume the Narnian equivalent of the fruit of the tree of life, which comes equipped with the warning that anyone who eats of it under the wrong circumstances "will find their heart's desire and find despair." When Aslan is asked, later on, about the fruit's effect, he answers: "She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery...."
This particular tact is perhaps one way to reconcile with death, it’s a way out of this troubled world. That’s actually a view I associate with Buddhism more than anything else, enlightenment as a way to overcome suffering. Buddhism, or at least some variants, are often thought to be one of the traditional religions that’s easiest to reconcile with scientific findings.
However, that interpretation, regardless of Christian or Buddhist origin, tends to leave me cold. I love life. I’ve experienced enough suffering to begin to understand why the day may come when I don’t feel that way. But really, immortality mainly seems to be a curse when you’ve got the depredations of aging and no friends to share it with. An outright evil heart may preclude that later but most of humanity manages.
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