Did Darwin Kill God Page #5

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larger idea of divine providence and skill. "

Even the Anglican hierarchy agreed.

The Reverend Charles Kingsley affirmed that evolution

revealed, "A noble conception of the Deity. "

What of Darwin? For many,

he's the father of atheism -

born a Christian, has a theory

of evolution, loses his faith -

proof, surely, that evolution

destroys belief in God? No.

Darwin was born a Christian, and lost

his faith, but not because of evolution.

In 1851,

Darwin was hit by personal tragedy.

His ten-year-old daughter Annie was struck

with what is now thought to have been cholera,

and shortly before she passed away,

was brought here,

to the Spa Town of Malvern.

Nick Spencer has been finding out

about how her death affected Darwin.

She died of a fever, which lasted

for about two weeks or so.

Darwin was with her for the

second week. He rushed from Downe,

where he was with Emma,

his wife, who was pregnant.

He wrote to her, saying, "You

wouldn't recognise our daughter. "

"She's wasting away, couldn't take food, pinched features

- she's not the girl we knew. "

What impact did her

death have on Darwin's faith?

It's the thing that wields the knife.

It's fair to say, by the time of her death,

he's definitely a believer in God, a theist

- that has a Christian flavour.

But the suffering he sees in Annie's death

and the sense of injustice and futility

is the thing that really

finishes his Christian faith.

Her death shows that, whilst we must

remember Darwin the scientist,

we must remember Darwin the father.

Suffering in the world is a constant

challenge to people of faith.

The arrival of the evolution made

this no harder, or easier, to bear.

The Origin of Species is not the great

atheistic treatise it is often claimed to be.

When it was published,

eight years after Annie's death,

Darwin talked about the impossibility

of this wonderful universe

being conceived by blind chance,

believing that there must be

an intelligent mind behind it all.

He presented his work

as beginning and ending with God.

Near the end of his life,

he declared, "It seems to me absurd

"to doubt that a man may be an

ardent theist and an evolutionist. "

In this light, it's unfair to proclaim

Darwin as the father of modern atheism.

Britain was actually more religious at the end

of the 19th century than it was in the 1830s.

Within 20 years of Darwin publishing his

theory, it was generally accepted in England.

Darwin had not killed God,

so why today, do we think

they are at loggerheads?

Well, the war had not yet begun,

and would not start

for another 60 years.

The first big battle in the war

between evolution and Christianity

took place where

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