Posted: May 02, 2012 10:10 am
jerome wrote:Well Mendel was doing his experiments between 1856 and 1863, so Darwin can't be blamed for not knowing about them.
Yes, but Darwin certainly knew that new-fangled things called genes existed, because AFAIK, one of his biggest mistakes was rejecting them as an important part of the mechanism of evolution, on the basis that they did not appear at the time to be connected with change from one generation to the next, which was what he was looking for.
As to Darwin's atheism - I'm not convinced Darwin was particularly atheist, or atheist at all. He wrote in 1879[Down Beckenham | Kent
May 7th 1879
Dear Sir
It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.— You are right about Kingsley. Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, is another case in point— What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one except myself.— But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. ...
I guess that, by 1879, he was "feeling the pinch" of intense peer pressure, including from his devout wife. This is what made him seem to back-track on the atheism he had previously come to through his studies of evolution, and "watered down" later editions of his great book, sadly. (Although, this did not matter too much, as the earlier editions were not destroyed.)
As for your claim that Wallace somehow separated his irrational beliefs from his work, no doubt, the experimental details were unaffected, but clearly his interpretation of them was at risk.