“CHARLES DARWIN AND RELIGION”

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, March 11, 2007

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Let me begin by putting to rest one rumor about Charles Darwin. Some people claim, and the claim is often found in print, that Darwin was a Unitarian. That claim comes, no doubt, from both those who wish to slander him as well as those who wish to praise him.

To set the record straight: Charles Darwin was not a Unitarian. As you shall see, he had strong Unitarian family ties, was positively influenced by Unitarians, and until age 8 attended a Unitarian church with his mother, but as an adult, he was closely tied to the Anglican Church. As far I as I could find, he never made a pledge, financial or otherwise, to a Unitarian church.

Charles Darwin’s religious views evolved substantially over his lifetime. They were complex, just as the religion of his family of origin was complex.

Darwin was born in 1809 to a distinguished, upper-class English family, though not typical in that society. He was born at a time when anyone who did not subscribe to the Anglican faith of the Church of England was called a “dissenter,” as was the case for different reasons for both his father and his mother. His father and his grandfather were both prominent and successful physicians. They were also both (as I discussed last week) what was known as “freethinkers,” denying allegiance not only to the Anglican Church, but also to any form of creedal Christianity. Charles’ grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was quite public about his denial of any religious faith, and was known widely in England as a freethinker and skeptic. He was not, he said, an atheist, but he certainly was a “non-believer” of the Christian creeds. In addition to being a physician, Erasmus also was active in scientific circles, and at some point before Charles was born had written of his own theory of evolution, though different from what Charles would discover.

Charles’ father shared Erasmus’ religious skepticism, but he held these views largely to himself, even if he spoke of it to close friends. Unlike Erasmus, Robert was quite sensitive to public perceptions, and didn’t want to offend society. He also practiced discretion about his religious doubts out of respect for his wife Susannah Wedgwood, who was not a religious skeptic.

Susannah Wedgwood, of the famous and successful Wedgwood pottery family, came from a strong family of Unitarians. The English Unitarians of those days bridged the gap between rational Enlightenment ideas and the Christian tradition. They considered themselves to be “rational Christians,” having dismissed or disregarded some of the more superstitious parts of Christianity, such as the miracle stories and the divine revelation of the Bible. Charles’ grandfather Erasmus – that crotchety-old freethinking skeptic – thought Unitarianism far too weak, and taunted his Unitarian friends by saying that Unitarianism was “just a featherbed to catch a falling Christian.”

As a child, Charles’ mother took him on Sunday to attend the Unitarian Chapel in town. I say “chapel” because under English law, dissenting groups were not allowed to call their places of worship “churches,” nor were they permitted to use buildings that resembled churches. In fact, it wasn’t too many years before that when it was a crime to be a Unitarian.

However, both Robert’s religious skepticism and Susannah’s Unitarian background were not as strong as their wish to not to be alienated from society. They had their children, including Charles, baptized in the Anglican Church, which brought about some societal advantages that were otherwise unavailable.

Charles’ mother Susannah died when he was eight years old, and after that his father strengthened informal ties with the Anglicans, but remained himself a freethinker. He sent Charles to an Anglican boarding school.

It was generally assumed that Charles would follow his father and grandfather in the field of medicine, but since the universities in England required students to subscribe the Anglican creed, Charles went to college at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. There he avoided medical studies, and concentrated on natural history and the science of nature.

Realizing that he was not going to prepare for a medical career, his father suggested that he prepare to become a country parson in an Anglican parish. As he thought about it, Charles was attracted to the lifestyle of study and, in a rural setting, the opportunity to continue his studies of nature. At the time, Charles didn’t share the religious skepticism of his father and grandfather, and his mother’s Unitarianism had been friendly enough with Christianity, so he felt close enough to the tradition that he could accept that career direction.

Darwin enrolled at Christ College in Cambridge and began his study of theology. He later wrote that at the time “I did not in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible,” and he was particularly attracted to the work of theologian William Paley. Paley was a leader of new theological school known as “Natural Theology.” The purpose of “Natural Theology” was to show how the laws of nature reveal to us how God works. Paley is also famous for his philosophical argument for the existence of God by the evidence offered by observing nature. Nature, he said, shows design and purpose, and since it does so, there must be a mind that designed it and created it. His well-known example was that if you find a watch on a beach you must conclude that the parts didn’t get assembled by accident. Some person intended those parts to work as they do. The watch must have been created by something or someone. Likewise, nature is far more complex than a simple watch, so how much more we should be forced to conclude it had a Designer or Creator.

The argument is both familiar and currently popular. In philosophy it became known as the “Argument from Design,” or the “teleological argument” for God. These days it is being promoted under the label “intelligent design.”

I mention this because it played such an important role in the life of the man who would later be responsible for challenging it from a scientific perspective. At the time, Darwin found it to be the most compelling of ideas. He later wrote, “I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley’s ‘Natural Theology.’ I could almost formerly have said it by heart.”

Before completing his studies at Cambridge, Darwin was invited to join a survey expedition to map the coasts of South America. He would serve as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle for more than two years. This, of course, became the major turning point in his life, though the seeds wouldn’t grow fully until years later. Darwin sailed with his religious faith fully intact. Some years later, he recalled the experience this way:

“Whilst on board the Beagle, I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality.”

We know, of course, that Darwin kept meticulous records of all manner of nature during his voyage. But it was reflections on those notes, more than the trip itself, which triggered in him the ideas that led to a revolution in science. They also triggered in him the beginnings of doubts concerning his religious orthodoxy.

The core of his book outlining his theory of evolution, The Origin of Species, was written soon after he returned from his voyage on the Beagle, but he held off publishing it for almost twenty years for several reasons. One reason for the delay was that he knew it was a dramatically new and different theory of evolution, and he wanted to be sure it was expressed as clearly as possible to other natural scientists – their approval was important to him. He used those twenty years for further study to hone and perfect his theory. But he also held off its publication because he expected it would be perceived as a challenge to Christian faith, even though he was a faithful believer when he first wrote it. He later recalled that “when I wrote the Origin of Species, my faith in God was as strong as that of a bishop.” When he finally decided to publish it much later, he wrote to a friend expressing his hesitation, saying that publishing ideas that seemed so unbiblical was “like confessing to a murder.”

It was also during this time that he married Emma Wedgwood, a cousin of his on his mother’s side, and of course a born and raised Unitarian. The records show they had a long and mutually respectful marriage, and it was in part because both seemed to be the kind who sought respectability and acceptance rather than confrontation. Emma remained a fairly conservative Unitarian Christian her whole life, but as there was no Unitarian church in their hometown, she would take her children to participate in the Anglican Church, where she was an active volunteer and participant. It is said, though, that out of respect for her Unitarian upbringing, she would remain silent each week as the congregation recited the Anglican creed.

Just as Darwin didn’t want to offend society, he also didn’t want to put Emma in an awkward position, which is another reason for postponing publication. But in 1858, Darwin learned that the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had developed a very similar theory of evolution, and Darwin decided he needed to get his published first to establish priority. This pivotal book that changed the story of science was first published in 1859.

Reaction to the book was fairly much as he expected. The scientific establishment at first looked on his theory with guarded and tentative respect, which in a few short years turned into overwhelming approval. Even Wallace, whom Darwin eclipsed by publishing the theory first, went on a worldwide lecture tour defending and explaining what he called “Darwinism.”

The church establishment also reacted predictably, with some exceptions. In the mid-1800s, theological study was beginning to divide between fundamentalists and modernists, or liberals. Darwin’s theory of evolution would gradually become accepted in those liberal circles – enthusiastically, or even passionately accepted by a few. But the more conservative and fundamentalist voices immediately perceived it as a lethal attack against the very heart of Christianity, and a battle was joined that – astonishingly -- continues still today.

When he wrote the Origin of Species, around 1838-40, as I say, Darwin was a devout and traditional Christian believer. But by the time of its publication in 1859, he was a thorough-going skeptic about Christianity, the Bible and the creeds. I will soon discuss reasons for his journey toward religious skepticism, but first let me say a word about his resistance to talk publicly about it.

By and large, Darwin refused to engage in public battle over religious questions concerning evolution. He was primarily interested in the reaction of his scientific peers. Darwin’s reticence to express his religious skepticism publicly was, perhaps, an effort to adapt, in an evolutionary sense, to his environment. The environment of 19^th English society was not accepting of skepticism or agnosticism, and he was convinced that if he spoke too boldly of his religious ideas, the attention would detract from the more important focus on his scientific theories. He was also adapting, it would seem, to his home environment. His wife Emma was disturbed by any suggestion in society that her now famous husband was a religious infidel.

Charles and Emma Darwin lived their quiet domestic life in the village of Downe, in Kent, England. When they moved there in 1842, after he had first written the Origin, but seventeen years before its publication, both Charles and Emma became active in the local Anglican parish. Darwin was a major contributor to the church, both financial and volunteer, and he founded within the church a charity fund to help those in dire need. Charles became the group’s treasurer. Most importantly, perhaps, he would develop a lifelong friendship with the local parish priest, Brodie Innes.

Their friendship transcended their disagreement over evolution, once the controversy began. Innes could not accept it, but respected Darwin personally anyway. The story is told that decades later, the year before Darwin died, he hosted a dinner that included both Rev. Innes and a well known atheist, Ludwig Bűchner. Bűchner was surprised to see Darwin so friendly with a clergyman, and Darwin explained, “(Brodie Innes) and I have been fast friends for 30 years. We never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and then we looked at each other and thought one of us must be very ill.”

When Innes retired from the parish at Downe back in 1864 and moved to Scotland, Darwin was unimpressed with his successors, some of whom were unfriendly to the man who discovered the theory of evolution. After several uncomfortable incidents, Darwin became alienated from the church, and while Emma attended on Sunday with the children, Charles went for a walk in nature.

What were the reasons for Dawin’s religious journey from orthodoxy to skepticism and agnosticism? There seem to be several reasons, both intellectual and personal. Though Darwin didn’t engage in public religious debate during his career, his views can be found in personal correspondences and most vividly in an autobiography he wrote to give his children and grandchildren. His freethinking views were so strongly stated there that it was only published posthumously. The autobiography was clear about his religious journey and the reasons for his skepticism.

Philosophically, the primary charge that evolution denied the traditional Christian scheme of things had merit for Darwin, and he eventually came to see it, even if he didn’t see it when he wrote the book. Recall that his strongest attraction to Christianity was through Willliam Paley’s Natural Theology, and the argument that the complex design of nature implies a Designer, or God. Paley’s argument was a re-statement of an ancient one known as the “teleological” argument for God. “Telos” is Greek, meaning “purpose,” and the argument goes that since everything that is created has a purpose (such as fingers and eyes), then there must be something that guides that purpose, and that something is God.

Darwin came to the conclusion through his studies that any “purpose” in nature can be explained by the laws of nature itself, and it didn’t need a “God” hypothesis. The law of evolution rendered the argument from design – teleology – irrelevant.

Another source of skepticism derived from evolutionary science is the rather obvious contradiction it poses to the literal reading of creation in Genesis: Seven days, Adam and Eve, the Garden. It just didn’t happen that way. Either the Bible is false or it was never meant to be read literally. In either case, it makes weak any claim for divine revelation in scripture.

He also came to the place where, evolution aside, the creeds just didn’t make sense. This was especially true in the case of heaven and hell. Here is an excerpt from his posthumously published autobiography.

“Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed 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 of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. This is a damnable doctrine.”

Darwin never went so far as to deny the existence of God. He was content to be an agnostic, claiming that there is not sufficient evidence to affirm or deny God’s existence. But he also believed strongly that evolution was compatible with theism, and there were plenty examples of deeply religious people who passionately embraced evolution. One key example was his good friend and supporter Asa Gray, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard who was a devout Christian.

Again, Darwin was hesitant to stir the waters on such matters. At that dinner which included his clergy friend Innes and the ardent atheist Bűchner, Darwin told them he preferred to think of himself as an agnostic rather than an atheist. Another atheist guest responded that “an agnostic is but an atheist writ respectable, and an atheist is only an agnostic writ aggressive,” to which Darwin said, “Why should you be so aggressive.” His son Francis, who was also present that night and reported this exchange commented that this is precisely why his father chose agnosticism: he affirmed respectability over aggression.

But there was also a more personal reason for Darwin’s religious skepticism that must be mentioned. Charles and Emma had ten children in all. One of them was a little girl named Anna who, in 1851, at age nine, died following a crippling disease. Charles was devastated. He had taken her for medical care in another town, and was there when she died. He wrote to Emma saying, “We have lost the joy of our household, and the solace of our old age.”

In his autobiography, Darwin did not directly tie his religious skepticism to this event, but when he gave a date to the time he gave up on Christianity and the creeds, and it was the year Anna died.

Darwin considered that religious belief was probably a natural human capacity that was selected early on in human evolution. In his follow-up book on evolution, The Descent of Man, he observed at some length about how religious belief and behavior can be found in all civilizations. He wrote, “A belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal.”

In an extensive article in last week’s New York Times Magazine, Robin Marantz Henig explores some current scientific research into how religion may have been part of human evolution. Henig concludes that scholars of evolution who are studying this “tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history.”

This view does not in any way invalidate religion, of course. Henig quotes one evolutionary scientist, Justin Barrett, who is a devout Christian, and sees no conflict between religion arising by evolutionary selection and devout faith. Barrett said:

“Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?” Having a scientific explanation for mental phenomena does not mean we should stop believing in them, he wrote. “Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me – should I then stop believing that she does?”

Darwin would agree, I think. He felt religion must have been selected through evolution for good reasons.

It is a mistake to think that Charles Darwin was an adamant opponent of religion. Though he ended up with an agnostic view, he approached religious subjects with a great deal of humility. One major biographer, James Moore, put it this way in an interview: “Darwin’s understanding of nature never departed from a theological point of view. . . . (His) idea of creation by evolution was a belief born of theological humility.”

He was pleased when so many devout religious thinkers embraced his evolutionary theory. But he was uncomfortable that so many asked him to address matters of religion. While he found the questions profound and meaningful, he did not care to offer opinions as strong or as carefully thought out as his scientific opinions were. To one correspondent he wrote, “I feel so strongly that the whole subject (of God and religion) is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.”

Darwin’s sense of religious humility is well-taken. It may be fair to say that he was probably not the best qualified to comment on the religious implications of his discovery. I’ve mentioned that there were profound reactions from religious voices about Darwinian evolution, both affirming and condemning. I’d like to spend some of my last minutes looking at some of those who found profound harmony between evolution and religion.

I’ll begin with the early reception of Darwinism by Unitarians, especially in the United States. Overall, the scientific legacy of Darwin found a welcome home among Unitarians. Historians of religion agree that the Unitarians were probably the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of Darwinism in America. In fact I at least three different Unitarian ministers are known to have bragged that they were the first ones to have spoken in favor of Darwinism from a Unitarian pulpit.

With the publication of Origin of Species in 1859, the Unitarians found what seemed to be scientific confirmation for their devotion to nature, reason, and human progress. The most receptive audience was the transcendentalist Unitarians, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. If Darwin was the evolutionary scientist, Emerson, a Unitarian minister turned popular lecturer, was the evolutionary poet. A full ten years before Darwin's Origin of Species, Emerson began his essay on 'Nature' with the following verse:

A subtle chain of countless rings

The next unto the farthest brings...

And, striving to be man, the worm

Mounts through all spires of form.

This heavily romantic view of evolution is familiar to many of us, and it is strongly imbedded with the liberal tradition. In the earlier reading from a 1913 book by Unitarian John C. Kimball, I quoted this sentence: “What is [evolution] but a new and grander form of the mystic tree of life. . . having all history and philosophy and literature in the whisper of its leaves.”

There was some, though not much, resistance to evolution within Unitarian circles. One of the strongest voices against it was Harvard religion Professor Andrew Preston Peabody, a conservative Unitarian who warned early on that evolution would destroy Christianity. But by 1880, Peabody’s conversion was complete, and he could write, “Far from casting doubt upon religious verities, in its every aspect (evolution) leads us up to God.”

Of course Unitarians were far from alone in accepting evolution within a religious tradition. The Catholic Church from almost the beginning, and many liberal Protestant theologians, found it to be an ally in religious insight.

So what religious significance could be attached to it? Oddly enough, it was teleology, the very philosophy that Darwin rejected. Where the old teleology posited design and purpose in the objects of creation – the individual design of animals, for example, or in the creatures themselves – evolution was seen to show that design and purpose was rather located in the laws of nature. The slow progress of creation, its adaptation and ascent to higher species, displayed, it was said, the hand of God giving guidance. It isn’t created objects, but rather the laws of creation that reveal God in nature.

In an 1897 book called Theology of an Evolutionist, the great Congregationalist minister, Lyman Abbott, stated it this way:

“The theistic evolutionist believes that God is the one Resident force, . . . that his method of work in His world is the method of growth; and that the history of the world. . . is the history of growth in accordance with the great law interpreted and uttered in that one word, evolution.”

Ironically, for much of religion, evolution would become a metaphor for divine activity in nature. It was not what Darwin either expected or intended, but then Darwin’s focus was admittedly more directed to science than to theology.

Darwin’s great theory could be a threat to those who would read the Bible literally. But for others, the theory of evolution enhanced religious understanding and helped correct some longtime misunderstandings. Gertrude Himmelfarb has written extensively on the impact of Darwin’s theory on history and made this observation: “From being a detestable scientific truth, Darwinism had emerged as an agreeable religious myth. No greater tribute can be paid to a theory.”

READING from Stephen Jay Gould

(Harvard biologist and popular science writer):

"Had Darwin been a cold fish, or a nasty exploitative man, we might be less attracted to him, though we would still admire the power of his thought. Yet he was a person whose basic kindness and decency defy the numerous attempts of detractors to demean or defame him....

"Darwin died April, 1882. He wished to be buried in his beloved village, but the sentiment of educated people demanded a place in Westminster Abby beside Isaac Newton. As his coffin entered the vast building, the choir sang an anthem composed for the occasion. Its text, from the Book of Proverbs, may stand as the most fitting testimony to Darwin's greatness: 'Happy is the one that findeth wisdom, and getteth understanding. This is more precious than rubies...'

"Darwin was not an atheist. He probably retained a belief in some kind of personal god -- but he did not grant his deity a directly and continuously interested role in the evolutionary process. Many have viewed this message as pessimistic or even nihilistic. I have always understood it as positive and exhilarating. It teaches us that the meaning of our lives cannot be read passively from the works of nature, but that we must struggle, think, and construct that meaning for ourselves. Moreover, Darwin maintained deep humility before the difficulty of such a task. He understood the limits of science."

READING from John C.Kimball (Unitarian Minister)

In his 1913 book “The Romance of Evolution”

"The Darwinian theory of creation, recognizing only one great tree of life rooted far down amid the rocks of the geologic ages, growing upwards for myriads of years and sending out of itself all the world has ever known of being, thought, and civilization, a theory full of mystery, full of romance, aye, and in spite of all the Church has said against it, full of religion too.... What is it but a new and grander form of the mystic tree of life, bearing the natives on its branches and having memory and hope, having all history and philosophy and literature in the whisper of its leaves.

"Science unpoetic, science filling the world only with dreary facts! Why, under its magic touch what is the whole universe but a mighty romance whose characters are stars and planets and the elements, not less than human beings; whose chapters the geologic ages, and scenery the glorious heavens and vastness of stellar space; a romance of most startling interest whose far beginning we have read and some new page is published from day to day, but whose plot, so intricate and wonderful, no human skill can unravel, and whose denouement in the eternity to come science alone, science without the subtler sight of faith, must try in vain to tell."