Darwin and God [Paperback]

There are a number of very good points about this book.

It is quite short. All the content is relevant, there is no padding
It has a clear scope and sticks to it. It seeks to review how Darwin's own thinking and Faith developed through his life, and how it was influenced by the evolution of his scientific theories and thinking.

You get what it says on the tin.
It clearly sets the historical context. While mentioning the infamous incident between Huxley and Wilberforce, it gives the wider cultural context and sets out how many Christians (such as Kingsley and Temple) embraced the theory while many scientists did not.

It is not Christian Propaganda. The author is a director of Theos. There might be a worry that a distorted view would be given. I do not think that this is the case, as the book certainly does not play down the fact that Darwin did indeed lose his faith. Of course this is explained, but the explanation given is thoughtful and respectful. I had the feeling that the writer is a big Darwin fan!

It considers sensitively how Darwin came to lose his faith. Unlike some recent t.v. programs which blithely tell us that, because of Natural Selection "there is no need for God" the book does highlight some genuine difficulties for believers to grapple with. I do not say that these difficulties are insurmountable, but they seem too often to be treated too lightly. It was refreshing that these points were highlighted - and then not explained away.

It gives an insight into Darwin's Character. I have always thought him a great scientist and thinker. I now have much more sympathy for him as a man (and father) as he wrestled with the implications of his work, but also with the reality of suffering. For me this book has revealed another side of his greatness, in championing free thinking, but at the same time having enormous respect for those taking a different view.

Finally I found it an easy read, without feeling that issues were over simplified. Recommended.

This is a slim but informative book on Darwin's religion- Darwin began as a Unitarian whose ideas, like those of many educated persons in his time, were based on William Paley's 'Natural Theology' of benevolent design. Consequently, the discovery that design did not appear all that benevolent had a thinning effect on a blood of faith that did not flow particularly strongly in his veins anyway. The cruel death of a favourite child seems to have had a final, chilling effect. But the evidence is that he was never much interested in spiritual questions, and was always something of a Laodicean.

The argument can be summarised as follows:

(a) Darwin came from a family of whig unitarians;
(b) such 'faith' as he started with depended on the scientific rationalism of William Paley, and, in particular, that the existence and nature of God could be inferred from what appeared to be the orderly and benevolent dsign and construction of the material world;
(c) that despite considering ordination, Darwin couldn't be bothered to read the gospels and had to ask his sister, when she proposed the he should do so, what the 'best' one was;
(d) that his loss of 'faith' did not amount to much more than the substitution of one set of 'rational' tenets for another;
(e) that the surrender of his specifically Christian beliefs was more or less directly occasioned by the cruel suffering and death of a favourite daughter;
(f) that, as a result of his rationalism, he never made a distinction between gentlemanly, or decent, and Christian, behaviour;
(g) that he remained puzzled at the discrepancy between the apparently soulless mechanism of natural laws, and their convergence, which suggested to him that the universe was not the result of chance;
(h) that he regarded the mind of man as necessarily adapted to the immediate circumstances of its environment and therefore unreliable in the context of speculation extraneous to those circumstances: hence and in contrast to some of the would-be wearers of his mantle.
(g), a decent kind of abstention from the debates which his theory occasioned, and a kindly benevolence towards the less sceptically inclined of his contemporaries.

His wife, Emma once wrote to him: 'May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, & which, if true, are likely to be above our comprehension?'

Which seems to me to put it with admirable succinctness: one should not expect to observe the sun's light when one is working a mile underground.

Darwin and God by Nick Spencer, SPCK, 2009, 160 ff.

Facing reality
By Howard A. Jones

`For a man who eschewed religious controversy, Darwin has probably had more impact on religious thinking than anyone else born in the last 200 years' - so opens a section of the Introduction that tells us why this book was written. It is not about evolution. It explores specifically Darwin's personal relationship with his God, how this changed over his lifetime and the emotional anxiety that his scientific discoveries caused him because of the impact he knew these ideas would have on religious belief, especially as his wife was a devout Christian.

In his student years Darwin contemplated a career first in medicine and then in the ministry. But when he returned from the voyage of the Beagle in 1836, his career as a naturalist rather than a clergyman was set. It was Darwin's reading of Lyell's Principles of Geology on the voyage that convinced him that biblical stories of Creation and of the Flood were myths.

Darwin's own beliefs thus evolved from a sound Christianity, to a period of many years of agonising doubt about the truth of the Christian religion (a period brought vividly to life by Spencer through Darwin's own words), to a state of open agnosticism about the role of God in his final years. There is no suggestion here that any time he became an atheist; rather, like John Locke with whose works Darwin was thoroughly familiar, he was an anti-Trinitarian.

There is a glossary of names at the end of the book, followed by several pages of notes and references, suggestions for further reading and a useful index. This book is thoroughly recommendable.

Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.