Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1883) was a famous naturalist born in England. He is best known for the theory of natural selection which has since been almost universally accepted by biologists as an essential aspect of evolution. The concept is that biological species develop over time via natural selection, branching from common origins. 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.
Early Life
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 an atheist. Despite his lack of religious belief, Darwin's father allowed Charles to be baptized into the Anglican Church. Darwin's mother died when Charles was very young. After his mother died, Charles attended a nearby Anglican school in 1818. In 1825 he helped his father treating poor people in Shopshire and went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He was turned off by the brutality of surgery and neglected his medical studies. At the university he learned taxidermy from a free black slave named John Edmonstone. John also told the young Charles exciting tales about the South American Amazon and also about the brutalities of slavery. Because of this experience, Darwin went on to hate slavery.
Religious Beliefs
Charles Darwin likely abandoned Christianity as a student when disappointed his father by refusing to become a minister. As an adult he was an atheist.[1][2]. About twenty years later in 1859 (at the age of fifty) Darwin published his famous book The Origin of Species. "In order not to hurt the feelings of his friends and wife, Darwin often used deistic language in his publications" [3]. According to Darwin the "manifestly false history of the world" [4] as recorded in the Old Testament and New Testament miracles led him to reject Biblical veracity [5]. Eminent Darwin biographer, Professor Janet Browne, sums up Darwin's views concerning religion: Darwin "mapped out a comparative evolution of the religious sense, proposing that religious belief was ultimately nothing more than a primitive urge to bestow a cause on otherwise inexplicable natural events...In short, he made no secret of his view that he did not believe religion to have any rational foundation at all" [6]. When he died in 1882 at the age of seventy-three, Darwin was buried at Westminster Abbey next to Sir Isaac Newton.
There exists in hostile Darwin literature a story about a Christian called Lady Hope who visited and spoke with a dying Charles Darwin. While this much is true, it remains controversial whether Darwin made a death-bed repentance to Lady Hope.
References
- (7) Kevles, B., Females of the Species: Sex and Survival in the Animal Kingdom, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 8, 1986.