On 9 April 2007 Michael Sylvester wrote: >If I am not mistaken, I think that Darwin in his classic work >expressed some belief that the universe was propelled by some kind of >a force. This has led some to believe that he believed in a God.
It would be so much easier if only Michael would give a quote and a citation so we can deal with specific statements. In the absence of these, any response must be general. When he was beyond his early adulthood Darwin did not "believe in a God" in the conventional sense, i.e., he did not believe in the personal God of Christianity, a view consolidated after the death of his beloved young daughter Annie in 1851, prior to the publication of *On the Origin of Species*. Re the article cited by Dennis Goff, why does a paper like the Independent get the "Arts and Media Correspondent" to write about Darwin, for God's sake (or Pete's if you prefer): http://tinyurl.com/2sgff8 >Darwin, who was born in Shrewsbury in 1809, developed his ideas about the 'transmutation' of species after his five-year voyage as a geologist on HMS Beagle, which eventually evolved into his theory of natural selection. Such talk was viewed as heresy by his contemporaries who felt it undermined their convictions on divine creation.< In fact at the time *Origin* was published many of his contemporaries were already open to "such talk". Evidently the Independent's Arts and Media Correspondent doesn't read the Times Literary Supplement, which only three weeks ago had a book review debunking several such myths: "...since the 1830s... Charles Lyell's geological theories gave [his contemporaries] a glimpse of the terrifying vastness of time. An ancient Earth was not inherently disturbing, but the fossil record made it clear that for most of its long history, the Earth had been uninhabited by people. If, as the Bible claimed, this planet had been made as a habitation for humanity, why had its creator taken so long to get the tenants in? And if God was such a great designer, why was almost everything he'd designed now extinct?" http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25350-2622681,00.html http://tinyurl.com/2bsa2v Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
