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→Religious Beliefs
When investigating transmutation of species he knew that his naturalist friends thought this a bestial heresy undermining miraculous justifications for the social order, the kind of radical argument then being used by Dissenters and atheists to attack the Church of England's privileged position as the established church. Though Darwin wrote of religion as a tribal survival strategy, he still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. His belief dwindled, and with the death of his daughter Annie in 1851, Darwin finally lost all faith in Christianity. He continued to help the local church with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church. He now thought it better to look at pain and suffering as the result of general laws rather than direct intervention by God. When asked about his religious views, he wrote that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.". Ultimately he found that his discoveries conflicted with the belief in God as the one and only truth.
When investigating transmutation of species he knew that his naturalist friends thought this a bestial heresy undermining miraculous justifications for the social order, the kind of radical argument then being used by Dissenters and atheists to attack the Church of England's privileged position as the established church. Though Darwin wrote of religion as a tribal survival strategy, he still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. His belief dwindled, and with the death of his daughter Annie in 1851, Darwin finally lost all faith in Christianity. He continued to help the local church with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church. He now thought it better to look at pain and suffering as the result of general laws rather than direct intervention by God. When asked about his religious views, he wrote that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.". Ultimately he found that his discoveries conflicted with the belief in God as the one and only truth.
== Darwin's Illness ==
Charles Darwin's work set off a firestorm of controversy. And Darwin closely watched the public's response to his ideas while his allies [[Thomas Huxley]] and Joseph Hooker advocated his ideas within the scientific community. For example, Richard Milner wrote regarding Darwin in the 2002 issue of Scientific American in a article entitled [http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B62D6-7E63-1D7E-90FB809EC5880000# "Putting Darwin in his Place"], that Darwin ''"clipped, catalogued and indexed hundreds of offprints, about 350 reviews and 1,600 articles, as well as satires, parodies and Punch caricatures, with which he filled hefty scrapbooks..."'' And it appears as if the criticism of his work may have troubled Darwin. Milner in the aforementioned article, wrote that after [[Charles Lyell]] published a very weak endorsement of Darwin's Antiquity of Man, ''"Darwin's disappointment brought on 10 days of vomiting, faintness and stomach distress". Also when anatomist St. George Mivart made a strong attack on The Descent of Man, Milner wrote it "triggered two months of "giddiness" and inability to work..." ''
Medical experts believe that [Darwin's illness was psychobiological or pyschological in origin].