Food For Thought: Darwin On God and the Universe
I found an old biography about Charles Darwin at a rummage sale a while back. I wasn't very interested in it, since it was mostly information that I had already heard, and it was told in a rather uninteresting way. This morning, I was wondering what it was still doing on my bookshelf. As I began to flip through it, this statement caught my attention (but it's really not that surprising considering that Darwin was once attending seminary to be a minister):
"Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impressed me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist."
~ Charles Darwin; What Darwin Really Said, pg 97; originally from The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, editted by Darwin's grand-daughter Nora Barlow
The book clarifies, "This conclusion, he adds, was strong in his mind when he wrote the Origin of Species, but gradually became weaker."
Darwin later said that an agnostic would better describe him, but it is important to note that he said he did not deny the existence of God. I think this is pretty good ammunition in the creation vs. evolution debate, because evolutionists tend to say that there is no Designer and most of them subscribe to atheism. It might help to point them to evolution's founder, Charles Darwin, who believed that there was a "First Cause having an intelligent mind." Something to think about.
For more good quotes on evolution, please visit this page.
"Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impressed me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist."
~ Charles Darwin; What Darwin Really Said, pg 97; originally from The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, editted by Darwin's grand-daughter Nora Barlow
The book clarifies, "This conclusion, he adds, was strong in his mind when he wrote the Origin of Species, but gradually became weaker."
Darwin later said that an agnostic would better describe him, but it is important to note that he said he did not deny the existence of God. I think this is pretty good ammunition in the creation vs. evolution debate, because evolutionists tend to say that there is no Designer and most of them subscribe to atheism. It might help to point them to evolution's founder, Charles Darwin, who believed that there was a "First Cause having an intelligent mind." Something to think about.
For more good quotes on evolution, please visit this page.
Very interesting. I'm glad the book was still on your shelf - that will be a good bit of trivia for our friendly neighborhood atheists. I'd like to see that quote on an atheist billboard!
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