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Darwin, Charles
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★ Darwin, Charles

In September 2008 the Church of England issued a belated apology for its attack on Charles Darwin.  Darwin hasn’t killed God: religious people have simply found different ways to justify their faith.  Has he destroyed morality?  Again, no.  To understand the origin of morality doesn’t mean you must cast it aside.  But Darwin has changed the terms of trade.  He’s returned us to Nature.  To its wonder, to its glory, and to its danger.  Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution questions almost everything we thought we knew about ourselves.  Where we come from.  Why we behave as we do.  The origins of our morality.  It isn’t comfortable and it isn’t easy but the more science looks at this theory, the truer it turns out to be.  Man is the truth-seeking primate.  Darwin has given us a great truth.  And there is no going back.  Andrew Marr, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, BBC 2009

 

Darwin had an argument about slavery with the captain of the Beagle, and became so angry he was almost thrown off the expedition.  ibid.

 

During the rest of his voyage Darwin would encounter a vast variety of plants and animal species he’d never seen before.  He’d discover fossils of giant extinct species that seemed to resemble the living animals around him.  And in the Galapagos he’d encounter different species of birds and tortoises uniquely adapted to the conditions on each of the islands.  Everywhere he looked he seemed to find evidence that Life on Earth was constantly changing.  ibid.

 

Malthus’s warnings helped push a draconian new poor law through parliament.  The poor were now forced into an even sharper struggle for survival.  Compete for work or off you go to the degradation of the workhouse.  Malthus would help Darwin find the key to explaining the diverse and ever-changing nature of life on Earth.  Malthus’s notion of perpetual struggle is really the break-through for Darwin.  As he squares up to the notion that in Nature, only one thing really counts: survival.  Darwin proposed that keener eyes, a bigger beak, better camouflage can be decisive for an individual’s chances of surviving long enough to reproduce ... By 1842 Darwin had a name for this mechanism – Natural Selection.  But he spent nearly twenty years testing and refining his revolutionary theory before finally publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859.  Darwin’s theory quickly took on a life of its own, beyond the world of science.  ibid. 

 

Survival of the fittest – Darwin’s adoption of those four words [see Spencer] would have consequences for a hundred years.  He meant them as a description of the evolution of life on the planet over countless millennia.  But they were seized and turned into a prescription, scientific justification for political ideas, some of which were vile.  Charles Darwin was a naturalist.  But the would-be engineers of humanity were delighted by what he said, and they were waiting.  ibid.      

 

In 1953 a British and American scientist working together in Cambridge announced they had discovered the structure of DNA.  It confirmed Darwin’s theory that all life is linked by common decent.  Including humans.  ibid.

 

 

At the time when Darwin was setting out on his travels, it was generally believed that God had created the world in 4,004 B.C. on Sunday October 23rd, and that all species were created by him fully formed and unchangeable.  Great Britons s1e6: Darwin, Andrew Marr, BBC 2002

 

Eventually of course Darwin had his eureka moment when everything came together and he suddenly thought, Yes, thats it!  ibid.

 

Of all the great books of scientific breakthrough none is half as immediately compelling and beautifully written than Origin of Species.  ibid.

 

There was one Bishop in particular, Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford, who became Darwins most relentless and persuasive enemy.  ibid. 

 

More than a hundred and fifty years on, Darwins instincts are triumphantly borne out with the mapping of the Human Genome.  Among the human races there are no significant molecular differences at all.  Its not arrogance Darwin teaches but modesty and respect.  ibid. 

 

He died with his head cradled in Emmas arms at four oclock on the afternoon of the 19th April 1882.  Darwins legacy, his gift to us all, helped us to understand ourselves and the planet we live on ... More than that, Darwin teaches us that we are part of Nature and that to thrive and survive we need to work inside it.  ibid.

 

 

I attacked the foundations of morality in Erewhon, and nobody cared two straws; I tore open the wounds of my Redeemer as he hung upon the Cross in The Fair Haven and people rather liked it.  But when I attacked Mr Darwin they were up in arms in a moment.  Samuel Butler, Evolution Old and New p54, 1879

 

 

A filthy abortion.  Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Darwin’s tutor, reaction to Darwin’s works

 

 

After leaving England, Darwin had immersed himself in the world south of the Equator.  There the vivid exoticness of its people, animals and landscapes had started him on an extraordinary journey towards a revolutionary theory of the Evolution of Life.  Darwin’s Brave New World, CBC 2009

 

December 1831: The Beagle’s mission was to map the coast of South America ... And when the ship anchored at the Galapagos Islands, Darwin discovered a natural treasure trove.  ibid.  

 

On the 14th of May 1856 Charles Darwin embarked on the long and meticulous process of writing his enormous book on evolution ... The publication of the Origin would be only the beginning of the controversy that Darwin was yet to face.  ibid.  

 

Charles Darwin died in 1982 aged 73.  He was buried in Westminster Abbey, thanks to the intervention of Huxley.  It was the final destination on a journey that began in the southern hemisphere.  ibid.

 

 

Darwin was very aware that these were dangerous ideas socially, politically, because evolutionary theory suggests everything can change.  Professor Janet Brown, Harvard University

 

 

He changed the way human beings think about themselves.  We are just part of Nature.  Professor Janet Brown

 

 

There’s only one reason why people have trouble with Darwin’s theory and it’s because it falsifies that we’re something speshul.  And evolution tells us that that ain’t so.  Professor Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago

 

 

Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.  Professor Daniel Dennett

 

 

So what else is new?  If there is no more to Darwinism than a truism then the whole theory rests on very shaky ground.  B Leith, The Descent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts About Darwinism

 

 

Mr Darwin’s rash speculation degrades science.  He is as bad as the French.  Richard Owen 

 

 

Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species first published in 1859 has been called the biggest single idea in the history of thought.  Creation 2009 starring Paul Bettany & Jennifer Connelly & Martha West & Freya Parks & Christopher Dunkin & Gene Goodman & Benedict Cumberbatch & Jeremy Northam & Toby Jones & Bill Paterson et al, director Jon Amiel, caption

 

You have killed God, sir.  You have killed God.  And I for one say good riddance to the vindictive old bugger.  ibid.  Huxley

 

Science is at war with religion.  ibid.

 

So much beauty for so little purpose.  ibid.

 

Thousands die so that only a few may live.  Is not the sum total of happiness in some sort of massive deficit?  ibid.

 

If I’m right, it changes everything.  ibid.

 

You are at war with God, Charles.  We both know it is a battle you cannot win.  ibid.

 

The loss of religious faith is a slow and fragile process.  ibid.  letter to Emma

 

 

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.  Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839

 

A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.  ibid.  p165

 

They expressed, as was usual, unbounded astonishment at the globe being round, and could scarcely credit that a hole would, if deep enough, come out on the other side.  They had, however, heard of a country where there were six months light and six of darkness, and where the inhabitants were very tall and thin!  They were curious about the price and condition of horses and cattle in England ... The captain at last said, he had one question to ask me, which he should be very much obliged if I would answer with all truth.  I trembled to think how deeply scientific it would be: it was, Whether the ladies of Buenos Aires were not the handsomest in the world.  I replied, like a renegade, ‘Charmingly so.’  He added, ‘I have one other question: Do ladies in any other part of the world wear such large combs?  I solemnly assured him that they did not.  They were absolutely delighted.  The captain exclaimed, ‘Look there!  A man who has seen half the world says it is the case; we always thought so, but now we know it.’  My excellent judgment in combs and beauty procured me a most hospitable reception; the captain forced me to take his bed, and he would sleep on his recado.  ibid.  chVIII  ‘Excursion to Colonia dl Sacramiento etc.’ 19th November 1833

 

I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.  To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate.  I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance.  Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves.  I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal.  I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye ... And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth!  It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.  ibid.  chXXI  ‘Mauritius to England’

 

 

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity.  More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.  Charles Darwin, notebooks

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