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 theory of natural selection which has since been almost universally accepted by biologists as an essential aspect of evolution. The concept is that organisms are modified over vast amounts of time by natural selection, branching from common ancestors. 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 Beliefs

Charles Darwin in 1880 at the age of 71.

Charles Darwin likely abandoned Christianity as a student when he disappointed his father by refusing to become a minister. As an adult he was an atheist. 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" . According to Darwin the "manifestly false history of the world" as recorded in the Old Testament and New Testament miracles led him to reject Biblical veracity . 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" . 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.