In the Guardian, Nick Spencer tries to paint a more complex picture of Charles Darwin’s break with Christianity than have some recent accounts, refusing to reduce it to the purely autobiographical any more than the purely scientific:
Darwin himself never thought his theory killed God, writing towards the end of this life “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.” It didn’t even kill his own religious faith. But it did wound it severely.
[…]When his emerging theory began to undermine these ideas, it also undermined the Christianity that was built on them. It didn’t happen immediately. Darwin’s notebooks show him trying to accommodate an intellectually credible idea of God and his new theory—in many ways successfully.
Continue reading “Darwin’s complex loss of faith” here.
