> I had noted in my letter to the British Medical Journal on
> Leibovici's experiment on remote, retroactive prayer that Darwin
> had argued against the idea that God takes a "personal and
> protective interest in how we live our lives".
>
> Jim Guinee commented on this, facetiously, no doubt:
> >
> > The great theologian ;)
>
> Actually Darwin had pretty good theological credentials. He
> studied theology at Christ's Church, Cambridge and graduated with
> a B.A. degree in divinity in 1831. But he gradually lost his
> faith, helped not only by his developing insight into the nature
> of evolution but undoubtedly also by personal tragedy.
>
> According to Milner (2002), three of Darwin's children died, two
> in infancy, and "bright and charming 10-year-old Annie, whose
> death plunged her parents into profound bereavement...[It was]
> the most wrenching event of the naturalist's middle age".
>
> Milner, reviewing a new biography of Darwin by Randal Kenynes,
> goes on to say:
>
> "According to Keynes, Darwin was at a loss to understand why most
> naturalists at the time thought they saw evidence of..benevolent
> design in a world so full of pain, death and disease. "There
> seems to me", he wrote, "too much misery in the world" for a
> loving deity to have designed it that way." Milner cites several
> examples known to Darwin, and notes that "with the slow death of
> Annie, the misery became personal".
>
> There are few personal tragedies that can match that of watching
> your own children die, and few better examples of the absence of
> a loving and caring God. So I thought it appropriate to cite
> Darwin in making this point in my note.
>
> -Stephen
Thanks for the elaboration (and maybe even rebuke). Maybe Darwin would
appreciate a retroactive apology :(
I was unaware of his personal tragedies, only that in a recent reading he
supposedly remarked that his theory was the "devil's gospel." There was
no personal information provided that might have illuminated this quote.
Darwin is not unlike other great minds whose intellect could not reconcile
their personal tragedies with optimism for the universe (e.g., Mark
Twain).
I am also mindful of the great Oxford don, CS Lewis, professor medieval
studies, who suffered intensely when he lost his mother at an early age.
He would later succumb to love, only to lose her to the ravages of cancer
after a brief but joyful love affair.
Yet for CS Lewis his pain found greater meaning, greater expression in
Christianity -- although he was one during his marriage, but a staunch
atheist
during his formative years.
Lewis would eventually take bible in hand, intent on demonstrating the
silliness of such popular mythology. Inexplicably, he came from his
failed experiment one of the great theologians of the last century,
writing "Mere Christianity," "The Screwtape Letters," as well as science
fiction classics for adults ("Out of the silent planet," "Perelandra,"
"That hideous strength")
and children ("Narnia Chronicles").
Fascinating how two brilliant men, who no doubt carried heavy hearts,
could
form such vastly opposing views.
Jim Guinee, Ph.D.
University of Central Arkansas
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