Posted: May 02, 2012 10:29 am
DavidMcC wrote:... Or are you going to suggest that no-one around him sugested that it would be bad for him to remain an atheist?
I don't think he was ever actually atheist . He seems to have said many times he was not. He was agnostic, on that scientific basis of working from available data and making tentative conclusions, but there was a big literature about of the God question could be a scientific one, and pretty much everyone seems to have thought not.
I think the problem he had was not people attacking him for being atheist - it was that he genuinely seems to have like, Huxley, disliked atheism as a term, and the people who stood for it in his time.
Huxley was very clear what he believed
Huxley wrote:I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father [who] loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I—who am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for our deeds—have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them.
and
Huxley wrote: The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis" - had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.
Now Darwin could have had a problem with publicly letting his scepticism be known - I think he was under social pressure, but it was not from persecution - that was coming from the physicists, base don their incorrect criticisms, though perfectly understandable in the terms of the knowledge of the time. He had support from some geologists who had rejected catastrophism - but much of his support, including Asa Gray who was crucial in the spread of his ideas, was from Evangelicals. To use some words from my essay I linked:--
Evolution was pioneered in America by the devout Evangelical Asa Grey, writing Darwinia (1876) which reconciles his Evangelical beliefs with orthodox Darwinism, and indeed being the only non-British member of the Darwin circle who saw Origin of the Species (1859) prior to publication. He dedicated much of his life to publicising and popularising Darwinian Evolution. A large number of Evangelicals were already evolutionist and many of the objections raised to Darwin’s ideas (like those of Soapy Sam Wilberforce) were primarily scientific not theological. The Evangelicals response was extremely positive. John Van Wyhe (Historian of Science, Cambridge University, leader of the Darwin Online Project) published a very interesting article in BBC History magazine — January 2009 – Volume 10 in which he exposes ye olde myth of church opposition.
Now, who accepted evolution in those first years? It’s a who’s who of Evangelicals — BB Warfierld, AH Strong, Van Dyke, Landey Patton, AA Hodge, WT Shedd, James McCosh — all hard core Evangelical leaders. Let us not forget Frederick Farrar, James Orr, Charles Kingsley and Henry Drummond, who Henry Morris castigates for misleading Christians – the father of YEC loudly denounced the dreadful treachery of his Evangelical forebears in accepting Darwinism or other forms of Evolutionary theory.
These Evangelicals critique the science from time to time, but accepted fully its theological compatibility with their Evangelical beliefs. Others like Rev.Macloskie, JD Dana, GF Wright, JW Hulke etc were evangelicals who fought hard for the scientific NOT just the theological acceptance of evolution – one could go on, but many historians of science and religion have already surveyed this territory and found that on both sides of the Atlantic works in favour of Darwin in Christian circles far outnumbered the minority opposition of Darwin. So who damned Darwin? It was not the Church of his day.
Even The Fundamentals, the founding manifesto of Christian fundamentalism, contained a positive tract advocating evolution, albeit Lamarckian, and critiquing Darwin on scientific grounds as I recall. Literalist YEC appears with Scopes and reappears with Morris in the 1960's. Much of what we think we know about Darwin and the church is mythic.
So yeah, Darwin may well have wanted to not offend his most vocal supporters?
Still this is why I love history: checking the facts often shows how much of what we think we know is just myth
j x