Darwin, Then and Now

Cambridge University

Without question, Darwin had a distain for Christianity. Darwin wrote, “I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlasting punishment. This is a damnable doctrine.” This is a remarkable statement for someone formally educated to be a clergyman in the Church of England.

Perhaps Darwin’s angst against Christianity stemmed from his father’s insistence that he attend Christ’s College at Cambridge University. Or perhaps, Darwin’s angst stemmed from speculating based the perspective of uniformitarianism that championed by Charles Lyell. While on the Beagle Darwin read Lyell’s book, entitled Principles of Geology. Lyell’s theory contradicts any concept of a global flood. 

Yet, like Lyell, once the scientific method had been abandoned, Darwin was free to explore concepts beyond the evidence. Two years before the publication of the Origin of Species, in an 1857 letter to Asa Gray, Darwin wrote, “I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.”

Ironically, even Darwin’s “bulldog,” Ernst Mayr, by the end of the twentieth century came to the same conclusion that “biology, even though it has all the other legitimate properties of a science, still is not a science like the physical sciences.”

Darwin had evidence, but the analysis was not bassed on the scientific method. Now 150 years later, the irresolvable issues could have been avoided had Darwin’s not reached “beyond the bounds of true science.” The convening of the Altenberg Summit in Austria this last summer highlights our entrance into the postmodern evolution era.