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C
r e a t i o n I n d e x
C r e a t i o n
p a g e 9 1
In this 1860 correspondence
to Asa Gray, a botanist.(one
who studies plants), Darwin says."...I
am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with
the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what
we may call chance...I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too
profound
for the human intellect.(no
doubt he had some idea about the invisible
supporting the physical world)...Let
each man hope and believe what he can...Certainly I agree with you that
my views are not all necessarily atheistical...I
had no intention to write atheistically. But 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. I can see no reason why a man or other animal, may
not have been aboriginally.(having
existed in the region from the beginning).produced
by other laws and that all these laws may have been expressly designed
by an omniscient.(all
knowing; having total knowledge).Creator,
who foresaw every future event and consequence, but the more I think, the
more
bewildered
I become...In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist
in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally
and more and more as I grow older, but not always, that an agnostic
would be the more correct description of my state of mind."
And in 1876, Darwin wrote
to his family about his journey onboard the HMS
Beagle:."...I
remember being heartily laughed at for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable
authority on some point of morality...I came to see by this time that the
Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos...By
further reflecting...I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as
a divine revelation...The old argument from design in nature, as given
by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the
law of natural
selection has been discovered. There seems to be no more design in
the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection,
than in the course which the wind blows...but how can the generally beneficent
arrangement of the world be accounted for?...This very old argument from
the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent First
Cause seems to me a strong one...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 rise in my mind...It
may be truly said that I am like a man who has become color blind...I cannot
see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence
of what really exists...Another source of conviction in the existence of
God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses 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 of 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.
This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember,
when I wrote the.Origin
of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with
many fluctuations, become weaker.
"But then arises the doubt,
can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from
a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when
it draws such grand conclusions.(it
can't be trusted; a higher consciousness coming from
the heart is needed))? I cannot
pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse
problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble
to us."
Darwin was
buried in Westminster Abbey April 19, 1882.
Darwin appears to have been
a true Christian who later lost his way, becoming
ambivalent
and.veering
off to find meaningful answers in other light.(knowledge).that
emerged
as promising in securing
answers for the questions of life important to him.
And a later letter in 1879."...But
I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous
universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me
the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument
of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we
admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence
it came and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the
difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world.(why
suffering?). I am also, induced to
defer to a certain extent to the judgment of the
many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see
how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me that the
whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect.(that's
because it's not a thing of the intellect, but of
the heart)."
Darwin often refers to the
conundrum
of a good God and the suffering he saw of man and animals and experienced
himself with the death of his daughter Anne.
In the closing paragraphs
of the.Origin
of Species, Darwin said that evolution, being, as he believed at this
time to be a 'production of higher animals', was set in motion by a 'war
of nature, from famine and death'. This, in contradiction to what God says
about His creation in Genesis, where, after each day of creating things,
He calls it "good":.Genesis
chapter 1.
Part ghost story, part psychological
thriller, part heart-wrenching love story.Creation.is
the powerful story of Charles Darwin and the single most explosive idea
in history.
Darwin's great, still controversial
book on.The Origin of Species.depicts
nature as a battleground. In.Creation.the
battleground is a man's heart. Torn between his love for his deeply religious
wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin
finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.
Paul Bettany plays Charles Darwin
in the film Creation, but which lovely lady is his leading lady
both on and off the screen?
A) Jennifer Anniston
B) Jennifer Connolly
C) Jennifer Hudson
