Key View Darwen

[Kathrine Selvage]

While Darwin came to heavily dispute the dogmatic prescriptions of the Anglican Church and Christianity in general, later in life he clarified his position as an agnostic in response to a letter from John Fordyce:

Charles Darwin had a non-conformist Unitarian background, but attended an Anglican school.[2] With the aim of becoming a clergyman, he went to the University of Cambridge for the required Bachelor of Arts degree, which included studies of Anglican theology. He took great interest in natural history and became filled with zeal for science as defined by John Herschel, based on the natural theology of William Paley which presented the argument from divine design in nature to explain adaptation as God acting through laws of nature.[3][4] On the voyage of the Beagle he remained orthodox and looked for "centres of creation" to explain distribution, but towards the end of the voyage began to doubt that species were fixed.[5][6] By this time he was critical of the Bible as history, and wondered why all religions should not be equally valid. Following his return in October 1836, he developed his novel ideas of geology while speculating about transmutation of species and thinking about religion.[7]

Following Darwin's marriage to Emma Wedgwood in January 1839, they shared discussions about Christianity for several years, Emma's views being Unitarian like much of her family.[8] The theodicy of Paley and Thomas Malthus vindicated evils such as starvation as a result of a benevolent creator's laws which had an overall good effect. To Darwin, natural selection produced the good of adaptation but removed the need for design,[9] and he could not see the work of an omnipotent deity in all the pain and suffering such as the ichneumon wasp paralysing caterpillars as live food for its eggs.[10] Until 1844 he followed Paley in viewing organisms as perfectly adapted with only a few imperfections, and only partly modified that view by 1859. On the Origin of Species reflects theological views.[11][12] Though he thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver,[13][14] and later recollected that at the time he was convinced of the existence of God as a First Cause and deserved to be called a theist. This view subsequently fluctuated,[15] and he continued to explore conscientious doubts, without forming fixed opinions on certain religious matters.[8]

Darwin continued to play a leading part in the parish work of the local church,[16] but from around 1849 would go for a walk on Sundays while his family attended church.[17] Though reticent about his religious views, in 1879 he responded that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a god, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."[8] He went as far as saying that "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."[18]

Charles Darwin was born during the Napoleonic Wars and grew up in their aftermath, a conservative time when Tory-dominated government closely associated with the established Anglican Church of England repressed Radicalism, but when family memories recalled the 18th-century Enlightenment and a multitude of Non-conformist churches held differing interpretations of Christianity. His Whig supporting extended family of Darwins and Wedgwoods was strongly Unitarian, though one of his grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin, was a freethinker, and his father was quietly a freethinker but as a physician avoided any social conflict with his wealthy Anglican patrons. While Darwin's parents were open enough to changing social pressures to have Charles baptised in the Church of England, his pious mother took the children to the Unitarian chapel. After her death when he was only eight he became a boarder at Shrewsbury School, an Anglican public school.[2]

The two universities in England, namely Oxford and Cambridge, were under the Church of England and required students to sign the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican faith, so many English Non-conformists sent their children to the Scottish universities which had a better reputation in fields like medicine.[19] Charles initially attended the University of Edinburgh, and while he was put off medicine he took an active interest in natural history at the Plinian Society. One of his proposers for the society was the radical William A. F. Browne, and on 27 March 1827 Browne argued that mind and consciousness were simply aspects of brain activity, not "souls" or spiritual entities separate from the body. A furious debate ensued, and later someone struck out all mention of this materialist heresy from the minutes. This was the first time that Darwin was exposed to militant freethought and the arguments it aroused.[20] On one occasion Robert Edmund Grant discussed Lamarck's evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished, but had recently read the similar ideas of his grandfather Erasmus and remained indifferent.[21]

The university was essentially tied into the Church of England, with virtually all of the college heads and most of the professors and fellows having been ordained. About half of the undergraduates were destined for the church, like Darwin hoping for a comfortable parish. During Darwin's second year, the harmony was disturbed when Cambridge was briefly visited by the Radicals Richard Carlile and the Revd Robert Taylor on an "infidel home missionary tour", causing a stir before being banned. Taylor would be remembered by Darwin as "the Devil's Chaplain", a warning example of an outcast from society who had challenged Christianity and had been imprisoned for blasphemy.[24]

Under pressure in the fourth year, Darwin worked hard at his studies, getting tuition in theology by Henslow. Darwin became particularly interested in the Revd William Paley's Evidences of Christianity and Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, which were set texts. The latter was becoming outdated. It opposed arguments for increased democracy, but saw no divine right of rule for the sovereign or the state, only "expediency". Government could be opposed if grievances outweighed the danger and expense to society. The judgement was "Every man for himself". These ideas had suited the conditions of reasonable rule prevailing when the text was published in 1785, but in 1830 they were dangerous ideas at a time when the French king was deposed by middle class republicans and given refuge in England by the Tory government, and resulting radical street protests demanded suffrage, equality and freedom of religion. Paley's text even supported abolition of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican faith which every student at Cambridge (and Oxford University) was required to sign. Henslow insisted that "he should be grieved if a single word of the Thirty-nine Articles were altered" and emphasised the need to respect authority. Darwin later wrote that he was convinced that he "could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and as I may add of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid."[26]

He read John Herschel's new Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, learning that nature was governed by laws, and the highest aim of natural philosophy was to understand them through an orderly process of induction, balancing observation and theorising. This exemplified the natural theology that Darwin had learnt in previous years.[25][30] He also read Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative, and the two books were immensely influential, stirring up in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science."[26]

Darwin planned a visit to the tropics before settling down as a clergyman, and on Henslow's advice studied geology with Adam Sedgwick, finding about the ancient age of the Earth,[31] then went with him for two weeks surveying strata in Wales. He returned to find that his arrangements had fallen through, but was given the opportunity to join the Beagle survey expedition as a gentleman naturalist and companion to captain Robert FitzRoy.[32] Before they left England FitzRoy gave Darwin a copy of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, the subject which would be his primary work.

Darwin was questioning from the outset, and in his first zoology notes he wondered why deep-ocean plankton had been created with so much beauty for little purpose as no one could see them.[33] He saw landforms as supporting Lyell's Uniformitarianism which explained features as the outcome of a gradual process over huge periods of time, and quickly showed a gift for theorising about the geology he was examining. He concluded that the land had indeed risen, and referred to loose rock deposits as "part of the long disputed Diluvium". Around 1825 both Lyell and Sedgwick had supported William Buckland's Catastrophism which postulated diluvialism to reconcile findings with the Biblical account of Noah's ark, but by 1830 evidence had shown them that the "diluvium" had come from a series of local processes. They still distinguished between diluvial and alluvial deposits, but Sedgwick no longer thought these deposits were connected with Noah's flood by the time he taught Darwin, though the debate continued. Darwin's notes show him increasingly discounting "debacles" to account for such formations. It was only later that glaciation was accepted as the source of these deposits.[34]

In Cape Town, South Africa, Darwin and FitzRoy visited John Herschel. On 20 February 1836, Herschel had written to Lyell praising his Principles of Geology as opening a way for bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others." Herschel thought catastrophic extinction and renewal "an inadequate conception of the Creator", and by analogy with other intermediate causes "the origination of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process". The letter was widely circulated in London, and Darwin remembered the phrase "that mystery of mysteries".[39] Missionaries were being accused of causing racial tension and profiteering, and after the Beagle set to sea on 18 June FitzRoy wrote an open letter to the evangelical South African Christian Recorder on the Moral State of Tahiti incorporating extracts from both his and Darwin's diaries to defend the reputation of missionaries. This was given to a passing ship which took it to Cape Town to become FitzRoy's (and Darwin's) first published work.[40]

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