h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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I'm glad you like it folks!

If the Queen objected, I shouldn't think Darwin would
appear on any british money ...

Yes Darwin probably thought about wether there was a God or not, and probably thought so in his younger years. Then he discovered evolution, and that a large and important chunk of the bible was wrong. That made him realize it might all be wrong, and that there probably wasn´t a god. Even if you don´t think with your brain, you should be able to see it is rather simple.

>> and that there probably wasn´t a god. <<

What, when he was an old man and about to die,
after all he'd learnt in Cambridge etc. and with a mind like his!

>> you should be able to see it is rather simple. <<

Yes, I do. But on looking at his life, I've come to the opposite conclusion to you!

Of course, it is possible that he died in a state of disbelief, but I see no evidence of that.

Could you share with us then the evidence you have for his belief?

I refer you back to post 16 !

http://darwin-online.org.uk/darwin.html

Earlier on (Post 37) you ask:

"why just take the part [of Darwin's belief] that suits you?"

Well, because, don't you understand that that is how science works? For instance, a scientist can accept the validity of Einstein's work without accepting his political beliefs. It isn't a question of setting somebody up as a 'Prophet' figurehead and following every word they say.

So your evidence is one line on a website?

So close to unsubscribing, but I'll have one last bash for what it's worth....

>>If you want to use Charles Darwin's 'life studies' to assist proving 'there is no God',
why just take the part that suits you from them?
He was a naturalist and theologian.<<

Right by 'life studies' I assume you mean the things Charles Darwin studied, so lets just review a few of those shall we?
I'll aim for historical accuracy if I slip up at any point be sure and point it out to me.

Charles Darwin abandons a career in medicine, his father directs him towards a life as an anglican parson, to this end Charles enrols at Cambridge on a divinity BA. As part of his studies he is fully conversant with the teleological argument for god's existence (the idea that complexity belies design and a designer), he reads the arguments of William Paley, including "Natural Theology" which contains the famous watch argument. So far not a glimmer of rebellion in the young man. He collects beetles, I seem to remember, but crucially he is also made aware of the work of Charles Lyell and Thomas Malthus.

Lyell was a geologist, who did extensive work in The Mediterranean,, published in the "Principles of Geology" which Darwin read. Lyell famously studyied the Temple at Serapis, with the distinctive bore holes on the columns indicating a raised water line, from this and other evidence, Lyell proposes uniformitarianism as the geological process capable of large change over long time by gradual and continuous, uniform shifts (like raising and lowering the land above and below the level of the sea), as opposed to catastrophism which advocates for sudden and rapid change.

To Darwin the ideas of gradual change and the vast expanse of geological time in which for change to occur were to be formative.

Likewise, there is strong academic support that Darwin was also aware of the economist Thomas Malthus's, who's views on competition for available resources would inform Darwin's study of how animals competing for resources was the basis of natural selection.

He then joins Capin Fitzroy on the pretext of stopping him going mad. (seriously) The Beagle, sails round the southern hemisphere for five years with Darwin on board as a gentleman naturalist, somethign his father deemed a foley and waste of time, but Darwin returns with a literal boat-load of specimens observing in many instances things which later become iconic with his theory, notably the finches and turtles on the Galapagos, which was the result of a nearly unmade diversion. I think if I recall from reading the online Darwin archives, he also went hiking in Peru and experienced the consequences of an earthquake which revealed fossilised trilobites which further eroded at the Paleyesque ideas of simple design.

When he gets back he starts analysing his collection is amazed to have the variety of birds he collected in the Galapagos to be all identified as finches. He continues to draft his ideas but well aware this his growing view that the variety of life suggest descent with modification over a great amount of time, he hits upon the natural method that would drive this process the competition for scare resources literally thins the heard of individuals that cannot survive, those who do, breed, and advantages adaptations are inherited. The same power of artificial selection known to generations of farmers and pigeon fanciers was also at work in nature by the method natural selection. That was Darwin's insight.

This is the undoing of the teleological argument he studied at Cambridge, and it remains the undoing of everyone claiming every variant of it ever since, up to and including Intelligent Design, because where once complexity belied design and a designer, it now no longer need to. Ss charles Darwin naturalist and theologian comes up against Charles Darwin biologist and I'll wager the theologian came off the worse. But that was not end.

What really did in for his faith, it seems is the death of his child from a fever in 1850. This is not a moment of atheism , but it seem to have deeply troubled him and killed off the idea of benevolence. still he continues to work on his theory and requesting information from other scientists around the world with whom he corresponds. but his church going delines, he becomes generally morose.

Come 1858, he receives a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, indicating that the vast division of fauna in Indonesia between Borneo and Celebes could be accomplished if these animals had differed and diversified by common descent over vast geological time Indonesia is a great place to see geology in action and also to contract malaria. Russell Wallace did both and in a fever-dream the idea of evolution of, what we know now to be the division of Asian descended animals and Australasian descent animals came to him and would account for the split in the archipelago that divides the two land-masses had being moving closer over time, bringing the divergent populations into close proximity.
Alfred's wee contribution is now noted in that the hypothetical line that divides the archipelago is now named after him.)

Feeling he's about to be piped at the Post, Darwin dashes off a hastily prepared manuscript of Origin of Species and He and Russell share joint credit when the work is read out at the Royal Academy.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/darwin.html

---------------------------

Right I'll stop there. IF you read closely - and better yet study the Darwin online archives - you'll see that Darwin was not trying to prove there was no god. And neither am I. Rather it is as a consequence of Darwin's studies that the idea of a creating, designing god gets severely undermined. Which is to say, that when Darwin attended Cambridge and read Paley it was assumed that complexity belied design , and this in turn implied a designer. By the end of Darwin's life that connection had been removed. Complexity could emerge naturally by natural means. Those who insist on a designer do so now at one step removed from that former assumption and in the face of mounting evidence that Darwin on this one point, and regardless of his personal faith or absence of faith, was correct, that animals, including us are the result of evolution over geological time.


Now let's quickly deal with what's left.

>>He was from a fairly affluent background and was well educated.<<
What of it?

>>He must of thought about 'spiritual matters' alongside his publishing of 'theory of evolution'.<<
I've already addressed that point I think, his theological concerns, once they began being confronted with the evidence gathered on his voyage came into conflict that conflict was resolved, unhappily and messily by the time he published, but the truth is the tension in his life, family and conscience played on him until the day he died.

My previous point, that all this being so, doesn't change one iota the truth of his discoveries, and the subsequent work that has verified and expanded them.

I'll said it twice and I'll say it thrice: so what if he did?


>>That's what it is. A theory. You can't really prove anything, without a hypothesis to begin from. Our brains accept or reject theories. Looking at the evidence, as Darwin must have done, I accept most of what he postulates.<<

Evolution is a theory! Congratulations for noticing! Let's just be clear that the scientific definition of theory is just in case you are labouring under the missapprehension that a theory is something like a guess which can be accepted or rejected ad hoc.

A scientific theory is a large body of related observations and hypothesis with multiple lines of complementary evidence which taken in aggregate explain phenomena and can make future testable predictions. Thus Evolutionary Thoery is the aggregate of many scientists and many hypothesis. I discussed one earlier: concerning human chromosome number 2 as an example. Now teleology, cannot make a testable hypothesis that god made human chromosome number 2 like that, because how are you going to test that?

I am relieved to know you say you accept this evidence, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, but I still don't understand why you persist in seeming to want to claim some significance for Charles Darwin's views on religion, as if that means anything to the theory - which for the last and final time it doesn't.


>>I have a theory 'God exists', and a lot of people in the world accept it, wholeheartedly.<<

I'd noticed.


We will all find out the answer [...] when we die.

I could reply stating my view and reasons but honestly I'm tired, so I'll let you enjoy a little Rosencrantz and Guildernstern, which covers the salient point about being asleep in boxes.



Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?

Guildenstern: No.

Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never *know* you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it.

Hi King Bomba,

I understand what you're saying, but as many of you have pointed out,
the theory of evolution, and theological belief are strongly connected.

Regards evidence of his belief in a 'deity', perhaps you would like to sift through
that vast vault of material on the 'said' website, and prove him an atheist.

I hope the sketch I've provided kills this one off quickly King Bomba.

The "strong connection" between evolution and theology dies with Teleology.

I sense a straw man argument: Darwin was not an atheist, he never claims to be and there is preciously little evidence on that website that would attest to such. I have argued his faith was troubled and declined but he never renounced it.

What I've also argued is as an intellectual consequence of Darwin it is more reasonable for others to reach a point of atheism, even if he never made such a move himself, because if they feel that a reason for belief is a teleological one evolution trumps that.

Darwin's faith or lack thereof is not got anything to do with the truth of the science.
Evidence and accepting evidence is not a matter of personal belief.

It really doesn't matter to the validity of his scientific discoveries whether or not he *was* an atheist, though. That is my point. And, after all, those discoveries are why we know about him today - any of his other beliefs or opinions are of purely biographical or historical interest.

There's an old phrase about the danger of 'throwing the baby out with the bath-water". We're falling into the other trap here - making the baby carry the bath-water around with it for the rest of its life.

Hooray.

>> Darwin's faith or lack thereof is not got anything to do with the truth of the science. <<

Alright, apart from the fact 'the science' came from the man himself.

And so the answer to the "Subject":

It's quite possible that he wasn't an atheist.

Is that answer

You really do seem to be thinking with that muscle you should be pumping blood with.

why are all the god botherers always harping on about scientists attacking god then repenting

science does not attack god it disproves mans flawed interpritation,

let go off what a bronze age prophet said in the desert and come up with a new explanation of god that fits how the world works now and not a couple of millenia ago...

"12-13 billion years ago god said let there be light (bang) and there was ......along with loads of strange particles that man is only now starting to understand"

if you want god to servive he must move with the times or he will become a fairy tale like all the other gods from history

come on you god botherers lets have a holy book that gels with what we understand of the universe

Well I looked at post 16, and found the passage on the website which says the extract was restored in the 1958 edition of his autobiography which is archived online.

I did word search for deism and got this result back. IF you want to take the man at his own words you'll see he quiet clearly describes the trouble his faith endured but he does not conclusively say he is an atheist. But speaks of disbelief and of reaching conclusions and that this opinion is shared by his father, brother and friends. Regardless if his starting point was deism, his end point is of a man who is trying to resolve the conflict of what he has observed with what he thinks and does the word "atheist" leave his pen? No. But quiet what to make of such passages except to say a hearten degree of doubt and questioning would imply, I think that he had questioned the faith he once possessed.

But for want of repetition, deisit or agnositc or whatever, this has no impact on the science. But I do not think it leaves your position with much credence.

The passage from "and have never since doubted" [...] "is a damnable doctrine." was omitted from publication after the 2nd edition on the margin note of Darwin's wife, but was restored in the 1958 edition. Which was the subject of the passage to whcih you made reference in post 16.

============================
Charles Darwin's Autobiography p.85 - p.88


"Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,—is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &co as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament. This appeared to me utterly incredible.

By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.

But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine.

Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of 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. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. 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. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.

>> Darwin's faith or lack thereof is not got anything to do with the truth of the science. <<

"Alright, apart from the fact 'the science' came from the man himself."

There's the idea, once again, that one must "take or leave Darwin" like a multi-pack in a supermarket - if you take one idea, the rest must have equal credibility. It doesn't work that way.

Yeah I spotted that one too and was wondering what to make of it.

Newton though Alchemy was a really neat idea too. Idiot.

It makes me wonder if our dear Warner can conceptualise ideas like 'objectivity' and 'proof' in both the mathematical and scientific senses and how these things are not the same as the opinions of the individuals concerned.

Last post from me, tonight.

It's an interesting start for me here at Hootoo.
Thanks for the debate. I just started this thread to 'warm up',
really.

I wanted to establish that I'm convinced that evolution & 'religion'
can co-exist side by side.

Perhaps see you all in your 'dawkins thread'.

Goodnight.

Likewise.

Goodnight.

But for Bob's sake re-examine your position in light of our discussions, please.

Only warming up?
So more to come then? Our cup floweth over...

Clive, Your last posts are 'works of art'. I don't know how you produced them so swiftly. Perhaps you have 'evolved' from a genius. I'm slowing down in 'my old age'. I'm not a experienced typist, either! Ok. Regards Darwin's voyage and faltering 'belief in God', it's very easy for your faith to decrease when isolated from your 'community'. They didn't have mobile phones or internet, and living on a ship for 5 yrs. ... "Birds of a feather flock together." It's the same for disbelievers as well. If you spend your time with others who are basically 'materialists' and have little religious/spiritual knowledge you will convince each other that spirituality does not exist. As you say, whether he lost his faith, or it was weakened etc. doesn't change the teleological argument. I find it interesting though, that Darwin for most of his life at least, was a deist and a believer in God. Regards the teleological argument, let's go below now, shall we? http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=4005961&post=73784542#p73784542