Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Darwin's Christianity

I don't think very many people recognize it, but Charles Darwin (who created the theory of evolution by natural selection) was quite pious. In fact, he initially went to school hoping to become a clergyman. However, after travelling quite a bit of the world and documenting the biology of creatures across the globe, he felt that he had no choice but to face evolution in light of overwhelming evidence. His wife, Emma, (who was also his cousin) begged him not to pursue the theory and wrote to him  asking him to return to scripture instead just before their marriage:

"My reason tells me that honest & conscientious doubts cannot be a sin, but I feel it would be a painful void between us. I thank you from my heart for your openness with me & I should dread the feeling that you were concealing your opinions from the fear of giving me pain. It is perhaps foolish of me to say this much but my own dear Charley we now do belong to each other & I cannot help being open with you. Will you do me a favour? yes I am sure you will, it is to read our Saviours farewell discourse to his disciples which begins at the end of the 13th Chap of John. It is so full of love to them & devotion & every beautiful feeling. It is the part of the New Testament I love best. This is a whim of mine it would give me great pleasure, though I can hardly tell why I don't wish you to give me your opinion about it."

Darwin himself was very conflicted, and he stayed involved with his church even as his theory garnered attention. But after he truly accepted the theory, he took on a more agnostic attitude because of the rifts he saw between science and the possibility of a God:

"With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.– I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I [should] wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can."

Just goes to show that not all scientists are happy with the problems between theology and science. Darwin, the father of evolution and origin of the biggest Christian conflict in history, wished it wasn't so.

(source)

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