The Ongoing Battle Against Darwinism — part 2, Darwin and Religion
This is the second in a series intended to expose the flaws in Darwinian evolutionary theory, and work towards a new theory to replace it. In the first I argued that Darwinism is not science, rather atheism posing as science, using examples of various scientists who followed in Darwin’s footsteps. In this article I’ll discuss Darwin himself.
It seems that he had worked out his theory of evolution by 1837. However, he didn’t go public with it until more than 20 years later, and then only because he had discovered that Alfred Russel Wallace had come up with the same theory. His motive was therefore to establish his priority, and take credit for its discovery, not because he necessarily wanted to make it public at that point.
What was the cause of this delay? According to the famous paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, Darwin was waiting for the intellectual climate to change. Earlier theories of evolution had included references to concepts along the lines of vital forces and teleology, but his was unremittingly materialistic¹.
In his notebooks Darwin had made these beliefs clear. On one occasion he had reminded himself to “avoid stating how far I believe in Materialism”. Elsewhere he summarised his views thus: “Love of the deity effect of organization, oh you materialist”². This would have been unacceptable in the 1830s, at the end of an era when “lectures were proscribed, publication hampered, professorships denied”, and scholars and scientists responded to pressure by recanting, publishing anonymously, or delaying publication³. (The Cancel Culture, which is a current concern, is obviously not a new phenomenon!) According to Gould, by the time that he published in 1859, Victorian England was more prepared to accept such a radical idea.
The philosopher Stephen Dilley says that Darwin invoked materialism “strategically and progressively… in order to enhance the persuasiveness of his theory, and to marginalize special creation from the scientific discussion”⁴. This suggests that he was working according to a calculated plan, cautiously revealing his materialism only step by step. It should be noted, however, that according to Darwin himself his disbelief gradually developed “at a very slow rate”⁵. This would seem to be contradicted by the material I’ve just presented. In any event that passage continues by Darwin saying that his disbelief “was at last complete” and that he had “never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct”.
Disbelief in what was not stated precisely, but it is reasonable to conclude that it was Christianity, probably the only religion known to Darwin. His correspondence is more revealing regarding his attitude to religion, rather than his published works. What stands out is the extent to which his ‘scientific’ beliefs were a response to his hostility towards Christianity and its doctrines.
He was living in an era when the accepted orthodoxy was the Fundamentalist idea of special creation, based upon a literal interpretation of Genesis 1. He was also appalled by the Christian doctrine of eternal damnation, and used the familiar argument, how could a benevolent God allow suffering? For example, he wrote that he could not accept that such a being could create a cat that would play with mice⁶. (Since first writing this, Gerald R. Baron has reminded me that Darwin was devastated by the death from tuberculosis of his 10 year old daughter, which would have seemed further evidence of God’s cruelty . See his response.)
Such arguments are hardly scientific, nor can they be considered evidence for the theory of natural selection.
Since it is not difficult to find fault with the Christian theology of that era, it is not surprising that Darwin reacted in the way he did, feeling compelled to arrive at a naturalist conclusion. One wonders whether he would have come to the same conclusions if he had been brought up in a Hindu culture, for example.
My conclusion is therefore that Darwin seems to have developed his theory of evolution, not because it was scientific, rather because of his materialist beliefs, and his growing hostility to Christianity. As Tom Bethell says: “Darwinism itself is mostly a philosophy dressed up as science”⁷.
Having said all that, I feel compelled to include the following observation, which seems to contradict what I’ve written so far. At the conclusion of the 1859 edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin says that “there is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one”. The use of ‘breathed’ here already has religious overtones. Extraordinarily, however, in the final 1872 edition this sentence has been amended to “breathed by the Creator”⁸. He would therefore seem to have adopted a deist position, since this is presumably not the Christian God. What a complex character Darwin was! Or do I mean confused?
From my point of view, however, it doesn’t really matter whether Darwin was a materialist, an atheist, or a deist, since in each of these cases he would have been wrong. This will be the subject of future articles.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
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Footnotes:
1. Ever Since Darwin, W. W. Norton & Co., 1977
2. Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836–1844, P. H. Barret, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p 291, p 564
3. Tom Bethell, Darwin’s House of Cards, Discovery Institute Press, 2017, p 166
4. ‘The Evolution of Methodological Naturalism in the Origin of Species, The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy and Science 3, №1, 2013
5. From his autobiography. This passage was not known, however, until 1958, when it was restored by his granddaughter Nora Barlow, having been omitted previously by his wife.
6. letter to Asa Gray, May 22nd 1860
7. as 3, p175
8. These are available at http://darwin-online.org.uk/
