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Thinking About Darwin, and What he Lost as He Moved from Theism to Agnosticism

By Anita Mathias

File:Darwins tree of life 1859.gif

The Tree of Life in Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species

I loved Mr Darwin’s Tree, a one act play by Murray Watts, a sort of “memoir” of Darwin–much of it quoted from Darwin’s own letters, journals and books–verbally lovely, rich and bursting with energy, poetic and full of pathos.

Darwin introduced a Copernican revolution into the all-or-nothing theological thinking of the age, which still prevails today in America’s Bible Belt, and among some evangelicals: Scripture is either all true, every word of it, or not true at all. If species gradually evolved, then the account of a six day creation was not true. Ergo, Scripture was not true. This crumbling of ancient foundations caused much anguish to Christian Victorians—and throbs through the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Tennyson, for instance.

But for me, the fact that God made the world in six aeons, that the finches and giant tortoises of the Galapagos evolved in response to environmental pressures rather than being created “as is” does not detract from the moral beauty and sublimity of the message of Jesus. One cannot sit and read or listen to the Gospels for hour  after hour, and not feel convinced that Jesus is more than human, has wisdom beyond ours.

* * *

 Darwin’s theory of evolution in a nutshell is: There is competition for limited resources. Better adapted individuals (the “fit enough”) within each species have heritable traits—which can be passed on to their offspring—which make them better adapted to survive and reproduce, passing on their genes to the next generations. Species whose individuals are best adapted to their environment survive; others become extinct.

Over aeons, the adaption of species amounts to a new species being created. In Darwin’s words, “being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.” 

* * *

 Darwin’s wife, Emma Wedgwood Darwin was a faithful evangelical Christian, and it was partly in deference to her that he delayed publishing the Origin of Species. With his Cambridge theology degree, he foresaw how going public with his ideas would cause great upset. “It is like confessing a murder,” he wrote.

And cause upset it did. Edmund Gosse’s heartbreakingly beautiful memoir, Father and Son, describes how his father, the naturalist Philip Gosse was thrilled when Darwin published The Origin of Species. His intellect and careful studies told him that it was true. Then he realized that it conflicted with Scripture which was true, so it could not be true. Gosse published Omphalos, a fanciful attempt to reconcile geological discoveries with Genesis (postulating that God instantly formed the fossil record at the moment of creation) which made him the laughing stock of the scientific community.

* * *

 Darwin’s wife, Emma, loved Christ, and talked to him as a friend, writing to Charles, “Will you do me a favour?  It is to read our Saviour’s farewell discourse to his disciples which begins at the end of the 13th Chap of John. It is so full of love to them & devotion & every beautiful feeling.”

But this did not convert Charles. Sadly, “the ways he evaluated evidence led him to exclude God and religion because he could only accept what could be proved in a laboratory and scientifically demonstrated.”

In 1876 Darwin described his agnosticism: “Formerly I was led… to the firm conviction of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.”

He lost faith in a beneficent creator. “I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

(Well, wasps control pests. Nearly every pest insect on Earth is preyed upon by a wasp species, either for food or as a host for its parasitic larvae.

However, whenever I try to teach myself about the natural world—the size of the universe, the expanding universe, the big bang theory, the theory of relativity, the mysteries of the tides—my mind boggles. I realize I am but a child at the shore of the wide world, and why should I hope to understand it all?  I believe God is good because Jesus says he was, and what Jesus says, I believe.

* * *

 Losing faith in God—losing faith in a good universe, governed by a good omnipotent Creator, brings other losses with it. In his Autobiography, Darwin plaintively spells these out.

In one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays.

I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.  

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher æsthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.

If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

* * *

Despite the challenge by the evangelicals of his day, such as at the 1860 Oxford Evolution Debate, Darwin’s ideas gradually gained acceptability, and he received a hero’s burial in Westminster Abbey.

Catch “Mr. Darwin’s Tree” if you can. It’s wonderful.

 

 


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Comments

  1. Don says

    February 12, 2013 at 7:30 pm

    Love this! I’m a biologist and have tried in vain to explain to many Christians why they should not be afraid of the idea of evolution. I am overjoyed to see you treat this subject in such a sound and beautiful way. It’s also wonderful to see a distinction made between Darwin the man (and whatever spiritual problems he may have had) and his scientific contributions. We have seen this in ourselves and in others: on the one hand, we can be divinely gifted and have a great calling, but on the other hand we are also seriously flawed in our character and way of living.

    • LA says

      February 13, 2013 at 12:55 pm

      I, too, am a biological science person and a teacher of young’uns. Unfortunately, I have encountered those who say that religion and science cannot coexist and they relegate God to a small box. To me, knowing that God set in motion this incredible universe makes me all the more in awe. In fact, the more science I learned as a youngster, the more my faith and amazement grew. To me, the two, science and faith, walk hand in hand, each answering the other. God reveals himself through our scientific discoveries as a creator of many wonderful processes. I second Don’s praise of this post…inspired!

      • Anita Mathias says

        February 14, 2013 at 3:26 pm

        Thank you, LA, and delighted your comments are showing up on Disqus!

    • Anita Mathias says

      February 14, 2013 at 3:35 pm

      Thank you, Don. I am delighted a biologist liked the post. I fell in love with the theory of evolution after watching Attenborough’s beautiful documentary on it, Life on Earth. It is so simple and elegant that there is something divine about it. And it does not contradict Genesis if we read Genesis as metaphor and poetry rather than a textbook on geology or paleontology. I have never found it hard to believe in Jesus and evolution!

  2. Debra Seiling says

    February 12, 2013 at 3:48 am

    Dear Anita, Although I’m not a fan of Darwin, this was interesting and I appreciate the way you pull all the background info together. Additionally, I like the way you stated: “Losing faith in God—losing faith in a good universe, governed by a good omnipotent Creator, brings other losses with it.” Thanks! Debra Seiling

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If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of th If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of the world on Black Friday, my memoir ,Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India, is on sale on Kindle all over the world for a few days. 
Carolyn Weber (who has written "Surprised by Oxford," an amazing memoir about coming to faith in Oxford https://amzn.to/3XyIftO )  has written a lovely endorsement of my memoir:
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The memoir is available on sale on Amazon.co.uk at https://amzn.to/3u0Ib8o and on Amazon.com at https://amzn.to/3u0IBvu and is reduced on the other Amazon sites too.
Thank you, and please let me know if you read and enjoy it!! #memoir #indianchildhood #india
Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping! So i Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping!
So it’s a beautiful November here in Oxford, and the trees are blazing. We will soon be celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary…and are hoping for at least 33 more!! 
And here’s a chapter from my memoir of growing up Catholic in India… rosaries at the grotto, potlucks, the Catholic Family Movement, American missionary Jesuits, Mangaloreans, Goans, and food, food food…
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Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but it’s time to resume, and so I have. Here’s a blog on an absolutely infallible secret of joy, https://anitamathias.com/2022/10/28/an-infallible-secret-of-joy/
Jenny Lewis, whose Gilgamesh Retold https://amzn.to/3zsYfCX is an amazing new translation of the epic, has kindly endorsed my memoir. She writes, “With Rosaries, Reading and Secrets, Anita Mathias invites us into a totally absorbing world of past and present marvels. She is a natural and gifted storyteller who weaves history and biography together in a magical mix. Erudite and literary, generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail, Rosaries is alive with glowing, vivid details, bringing to life an era and culture that is unforgettable. A beautifully written, important and addictive book.”
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Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photograph Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photographing ancient colleges! Enjoy.
And just a note that Amazon is offering a temporary discount on my memoir, Rosaries, Reading, Steel https://amzn.to/3UQN28z . It’s £7.41.
Here’s an endorsement from my friend, Francesca Kay, author of the beautiful novel, “An Equal Stillness.” This is a beautifully written account of a childhood, so evocative, so vivid. The textures, colours and, above all, the tastes of a particular world are lyrically but also precisely evoked and there was much in it that brought back very clear memories of my own. Northern India in the 60s, as well as Bandra of course – dust and mercurochrome, Marie biscuits, the chatter of adult voices, the prayers, the fruit trees, dogs…. But, although you rightly celebrate the richness of that world, you weave through this magical remembrance of things past a skein of sadness that makes it haunting too. It’s lovely!” #oxford #beauty
So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promis So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promise, but just to let you know that my memoir "Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India," is now available in India in paperback. https://www.amazon.in/s?k=rosaries+reading+secrets&crid=3TLDQASCY0WTH&sprefix=rosaries+r%2Caps%2C72&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_10My endorsements say it is evocative, well-written, magical, haunting, and funny, so I'd be thrilled if you bought a copy on any of the Amazon sites. 
Endorsements 
A beautifully written account. Woven through this magical remembrance of things past is a skein of sadness that makes it haunting. Francesca Kay, An Equal Stillness. 
A dazzling vibrant tale of childhood in post-colonial India. Mathias conjures 1960s India and her family in uproarious and heart-breaking detail. Erin Hart, Haunted Ground 
Mathias invites us into a wonderfully absorbing and thrilling world of past and present marvels… generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail. A beautifully written, important, and addictive book. Jenny Lewis, Gilgamesh Retold 
Tormented, passionate and often sad, Mathias’s beautiful childhood memoir is immensely readable. Trevor Mostyn, Coming of Age in The Middle East.
A beautifully told and powerful story. Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard-earned wisdom. Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford 
A remarkable account. A treasure chest…full of food (always food), books (always books), a family with all its alliances and divisions. A feat of memory and remembrance. Philip Gooden, The Story of English
Anita’s pluck and charm shine through every page of this beautifully crafted, comprehensive and erudite memoir. 
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Mathias’s prose is lively and evocative. An enjoyable and accessible book. Sylvia Vetta, Sculpting the Elephant
Anita Mathias is an is an accomplished writer. Merryn Williams, Six Women Novelists
Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the pa Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the past. For the past is not dead; it’s not even past, as William Faulkner observed. So what does one do with this undead past? Forgive. Forgive, huh? Forgive. Let it go. Again and again.
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Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing t Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing the memoir was to be like “the treasure in the field,” that Jesus talks about in the Gospels, which you sacrifice everything to buy. (Though of course, he talks about an intimate relationship with God, not finishing a book!!) Anyway, I’ve stayed off social media for months… but I’ve always greatly enjoyed social media (in great moderation) and it’s lovely to be back with the book now done  https://amzn.to/3eoRMRN  So, our family news: Our daughter Zoe is training for ministry as a priest in the Church of England, at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. She is “an ordinand.” In her second year. However, she has recently been one of the 30 ordinands accepted to work on an M.Phil programme (fully funded by the Church of England.) She will be comparing churches which are involved in community organizing with churches which are not, and will trace the impact of community organizing on the faith of congregants.  She’ll be ordained in ’24, God willing.
Irene is in her final year of Medicine at Oxford University; she will be going to Toronto for her elective clinical work experience, and will graduate as a doctor in June ‘23, God willing.
And we had a wonderful family holiday in Ireland in July, though that already feels like a long time ago!
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Friends, some stellar reviews from distinguished writers, and a detailed description here!!
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