Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1883) was a famous naturalist born in England. He is best known for the the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection which has since been almost universally accepted by secular scientists as the foundation of modern biology. The concept is that organisms are modified over vast amounts of time by naturally occurring processes, originating from common ancestors that lived tens of millions of years ago. Outside of evolution in particular, he was regarded as an expert on barnacles, as well as being credited with discovering how coral atolls were formed.

General Biography

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England in 1809 to his parents Dr. Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgewood. Darwin's mother was a religious woman but his father was, for the most part, a weak deist. Despite his lack of theistic religious belief, Darwin's father allowed Charles to be baptized into the Anglican Church and encouraged him to become a clergyman. Darwin's mother died in 1817. In 1825 he went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. There, he became horrified with the brutality of surgery before anesthesia was invented and quit his medical studies. In 1831 he graduated from Christ's College at Cambridge with a BA degree in the classics and theology. On December 27 of the same year he departed on the HMS Beagle for a five year voyage of exploration. The Beagle returned to English shores on October 2 1836. In 1837, Darwin drew his now famous depiction of common ancestry in the form of a branching tree . The following year he discovered the concept of natural selection. Darwin insists that naturally occurring phenomena and factors working together in blind tandem have prodcued nature and eventually mankind. However, he originally based the idea of human evolution on a racist assumption, [after God was rejected as Creator], made in the late 1830s, that Fuegians (natives of Tierra del Fuego) resembled primates that he had observed in the London zoo. In 1842 he wrote out a sketch of his theory but did not publish it. Again, in 1844 he produced what is known today as an essay of the same theory more developed but he still chose not to publish. Finally, in 1859, Darwin publishes his famous theory about how life may have been produced without any aid from a Divine Creator, he titles his book: On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life. In 1871, well after his theory enjoyed widespread success, Darwin published his ideas on human evolution in a two volume book titled Descent of Man.

Religious Views

Charles Darwin in 1880 at the age of 71.

Charles Darwin most likely abandoned Christianity as a young adult when he disappointed his father by refusing to become a minister. In his autobiography, written during the last six years of his life, Darwin claimed to be an Agnostic in the strict context of biological First Cause:

"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic"

Charles Darwin writing in his private "M" notebook of 1838: "To avoid stating how far, I believe, in Materialism, say only that emotions, instincts degrees of talent, which are hereditary are so because brain of child resembles parent stock"

Harvard Professor Ernst Mayr: "It is apparent that Darwin lost his faith in the years 1836-39, much of it clearly prior to the reading of Malthus. In order not to hurt the feelings of his friends and of his wife, Darwin often used deistic language in his publications, but much in his Notebooks indicates that by this time he had become a 'materialist' (more or less = atheist)"

However, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states the following:

“

In 1885, the Duke of Argyll recounted a conversation he had had with Charles Darwin the year before Darwin's death: In the course of that conversation I said to Mr. Darwin, with reference to some of his own remarkable works on the Fertilisation of Orchids, and upon The Earthworms, and various other observations he made of the wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature—I said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and the expression of Mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin's answer. He looked at me very hard and said, “Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times,” and he shook his head vaguely, adding, “it seems to go away.”(Argyll 1885, 244]

”

There exists in hostile Darwin literature a story about a Christian called Lady Hope who visited and spoke with a dying Charles Darwin. This appears to be merely a legend, and there is no evidence that Lady Hope ever converted or even visited Darwin on his deathbed.

Darwin's Illness

For most of his adult life Darwin suffered from ill health. The 1992 New Encyclopaedia Britannica stated that Darwin's illness was psychogenic in origin (A psychogenic illness is one that originates in the mind or in mental condition). In 2002, Richard Milner wrote an article entitled "Putting Darwin in his Place" and stated 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..." Criticisms of his work troubled Darwin. Milner wrote that after Charles Lyell published a weak endorsement of Darwin's work in Lyell's Antiquity of Man, "Darwin's disappointment brought on 10 days of vomiting, faintness and stomach distress". In addition, Milner states when anatomist St. George Mivart made a negative review of Darwin's work The Descent of Man, it "triggered two months of "giddiness" and inability to work..." According to the abstract for a 1997 journal article in the Notes and Records of the Royal Society the psychogenic hypothesis for the origin of Darwin's illness "holds the field" but the article questions the validity of this diagnosis due to the work of Ralph Colp Jr. MD, a physician and psychiatrist.