11-08-2005, 10:46 PM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,552
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by gideongallery
really the what was the prevelent theory about why life existed at the time.
If he assumed that God existed there would have been no need for his theory to explain the diversity of life, he would have attributed it to God and be done with it.
Which is what most people of his time did.
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Come on man, what are you playing at? Seriously.
Any quick search on Google for a Charles Darwin biography will tell you what you need to know.
Quote:
Charles Darwin came from a Nonconformist background. Though several members of his family were Freethinkers, openly lacking conventional religious beliefs, he did not initially doubt the literal truth of the Bible. He attended a Church of England school, then at Cambridge studied Anglican theology to become a clergyman and was fully convinced by William Paley's teleological argument that design in nature proved the existence of God. However, his beliefs began to shift during his time on board HMS Beagle. He questioned what he saw?wondering, for example, at beautiful deep-ocean creatures created where no one could see them, and shuddering at the sight of a wasp paralysing caterpillars as live food for its eggs; he saw the latter as contradicting Paley's vision of beneficent design. While on the Beagle Darwin was quite orthodox and would quote the Bible as an authority on morality, but had come to see the history in the Old Testament as being false and untrustworthy.
Upon his return, he investigated transmutation of species, aware that his clerical naturalist friends thought this a bestial heresy undermining miraculous justifications for the social order, and aware that such revolutionary ideas were especially unwelcome at a time when the Church of England's established position was under attack from radical Dissenters and atheists. While secretly developing his theory of natural selection, Darwin even wrote of religion as a tribal survival strategy, though he still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. His belief continued to dwindle over the time, and with the death of his daughter Annie in 1851, Darwin finally lost all faith in Christianity. He continued to give support to the local church and help with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church.
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