Darwin’s Day: 4 Snapshots From The Evolution Of Evolution

4: A Voyage that Led to Unbelief

Does skepticism lead to the pursuit of science or is it the other way around? In other words, does doubt lead students to pursue science, or does scientific study lead to their religious doubts?

It’s a chicken or egg argument.

For Charles Darwin, as he delved deeper and deeper into the implications of natural selection, his remaining faith slowly ebbed away. Darwin had once studied for the clergy, though mainly because he had washed out as a doctor due to his squeamishness.

Young Charles needed to find a respectable job for someone in his station, as a member of the landed gentry. At the time, many clergymen studied nature because the “argument from design” was once a popular subject of sermons. In the days before On the Origin of Species, the perfection of nature was thought to evoke reverence for the glory of God.

This so-called natural theology is well known to atheists because William Paley’s teleological, Divine Watchmaker argument has been exhumed from its grave by creationists and IDers.

Despite the lies of these groups, studies show that belief in God is fading fast among scientists. As Darwin’s deconversion presaged, this loss of faith is especially strong in those in the natural sciences.

Unlike Alfred Russel Wallace, who prompted him to get off his celebrated ass and publish On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin recognized that the ultimate implications of natural selection.

Even the mind of humans–which had attained the power to understand the mechanisms of nature–was part of it too.

*These posts originally appeared in The Secular Spectrum.

Photo credits:

Charles Darwin: By Henry Maull and John Fox, derivative work, Public Domain.
Leeshypooh/Pixabay
By Steve – originally posted to Flickr as Horses 2, CC BY 2.0.
The Creation of Adam/Michelangelo.
The Voyage of the Beagle: By R. T. Pritchett – The Popular Science Monthly, Volume 57 p. 87, reproduction of frontispiece from Darwin, Charles (1890), Public Domain.

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