William Crawley

Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Late in his life, Charles Darwin received a letter from an atheist author who wished to dedicate his new book to the great scientist. Darwin declined with this letter: "Though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science."

I don't think it follows from this letter, as some have suggested, that Darwin personally resisted full-bodied atheism or naturalism. Darwin's attitude to religion changed over time, and considerable debate continues over his full and final position on the existence of God or the value of religion. The unexpurgated version of his posthumous Autobiography makes it clear to many of us that Darwin had fully embraced what he termed "disbelief" by the end of his days. Claims that he had a death-bed conversion have been overwhelmingly crushed by careful historians like James Moore.

But was Darwin an opponent of religious belief? He certainly disgreed with his very religious wife, Emma, about religion, but he did so with enormous respect for her intelligence and her personal beliefs. He didn't ridicule her religious belief, even though he disagreed with them. To this extent, Darwin was less concerned with battling religion than he was with simply making space for his own views in a world where supernaturalism was presumed. The cultural climate had changed, of course, since the late 19th century, but note Darwin's advice to an atheist campaigner of his own day: the best way to advance freedom of thought (by which he may mean 'naturalism') is not by direct arguments but by doing science well.

If Darwin were alive today, would that still be his advice to the strident atheistic Darwinians of our own day? The science writers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-authors of the soon-to-be-published "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future", believe today's New Atheists could learn a trick or two from the Victorian gentleman they so often celebrate. I suspect their comments are a publicity tease; and the New Atheists have already taken the bit between their teeth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/08/darwin_and_atheism.html