Charles Darwin Quotes

This quotation is very interesting in the light of the so called “intelligent design” opponents of evolution. Darwin himself was by no means an atheist but he did not see the “hand of God in everything about him”. He did not maintain that a God could not have a hand in setting the laws of evolution which then produced all the species. However, the modern proponents of “intelligent design” insist that the evolutionary mechanism is so complex that God must have a role in the processes themselves. There are atheist evolutionists and evolutionists who believe that there was a God or prime mover setting the laws of science in motion, but all so called intelligent design enthusiasts are religious and believe that God is involved in the process. They reject the scientific method and their assertions are not subject to scientific proof or falsification. They are not scientists in contrast to the scientists who believe there was a God or prime mover initiating the process.

This was not only the case in 1852, but also true 150 years later. The only difference is that there is much more proof of Evolution, and there is a much smaller proportion of the population that questions Evolution as the fundamental mechanism by which all species have developed.

Darwin who had a Protestant Christian upbringing, never precluded the possibility that God had created the universe with the Laws of Evolution and that was the mechanism He selected to allow all the species and diversity of life to develop. But he did not say that explicitly. While he found immediate acceptance and accolades from the scientific communities throughout the world, and enthusiastic approval by most educated people with the exception of theologians and clerics. Their reaction was extreme—almost apoplectic. The book as a best seller and they sold out with each successive printing. In the 6th edition, Darwin not only was explicit about the role the Deity might have had, but Darwin stated that he personally believed that He was the impetus to the creative process. Ironically, almost all the social and political opponents of Evolution have never read Darwin’s work (or much else on the subject) and certainly do not realize that the man they accuse of leaving God out of the Creation, actually believed that God was the critical element and he and other evolutionary scientists were just discovering God’s laws. Dr. Huxley and some other supporters of Darwin were disappointed with this change in the 6th edition, as they were atheists and believed that there was no deity involved in the creation. Today, there are evolutionary scientists who are on both sides of the issue. They just disagree on this point, but they work together on everything else.

The religious theology of the Church of England had accepted the fact based on Newton’s work, that the heavenly bodies followed a set of scientific laws that were themselves created by God. However, the Church could not accept the same principle when it came to the different species of humans and lower order animals. Each species they believe was created with all its characteristics by God directly and species could not change, develop, regress, go extinct unless God specifically ordained that. It was this inconsistency that Darwin was afraid would produce religious attacks on him and his notions of natural selection while astronomy and physics was treated very different theologically. Darwin delayed publishing his findings for 25 years hoping to find a religious atmosphere that would treat biology much as physics and astronomy. It didn’t come and finally he published and took the heat, which actually was not very great. With the exception of some religious fundamentalists, most other elements of society welcomed and supported Darwin’s ideas which today we realize were among the most important ever put forth in the world of science.

The school board had been pressured by religious fundamentalists throughout the state of Georgia to affix these stickers ({586989}) to all textbooks as there were no textbooks that met curricular standards that did not teach evolution. As soon as they started this practice, a suit was filed in the Federal District Court which ordered the stickers to be removed.

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York

Only six years later, the University was intellectually and politically split asunder when the prestigious chairman of the Geology Department wrote that the fossil record was at variance with the date the church had ascribed to Adam and Eve. Vanderbuilt was then controlled by the Tennessee Methodist Episcopal whose Bishop served as its President. See {612709} and {612831}.

This quotation is noteworthy because although there are some scientists who are sympathetic to the religious fundamentalist view of the origin of the universe, they are almost always second class scientists. In this case, the scientist is a first class scientist, a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. So his quotation has more weight than of most others and is used more often by many fundamentalists who support the Biblical Genesis version of creation rather than the Big Bang scientific explanations and evolution. There are however many great scientists who also are people of faith in a God. They may be religious, but like most religious Americans, interpret the Bible metaphorically and symbolically rather than literally as the fundamentalists do.

This is an important quotation for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the extreme diversity of religion in America. To Swaggart, Evolution is a “Satanic Theory”. However, to most American religious leaders, Evolution, per se, is not problematic. The Roman Catholic Church has no trouble with Evolution; Catholic Universities teach Evolution as a basic part of their science curricula. Jews have no theological problems with Evolution. None of the main-line Protestant Churches have any theological opposition to Evolution per se. Yet there are other Protestant denominations who find that Evolution is in contradiction to a literal interpretation of the Bible and hence do not accept it. Second, it shows the extreme level of vituperation and disrespect that is given differing points of view by some of the extreme fundamentalists who do not have the traditional American religious tolerance for differing belief structures. Here Swaggart accuses the hundreds of millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and other clerics and laypeople who see Evolution as a well-established explanation of much of science, of being not only atheists but atheists in league with the Devil. A third factor is that this quotation is an example of a Minister telling people what is or is not science and scientifically demonstrated. If a scientist without any religious training of study were ever to render judgments on theology, most of us would laugh and see it as ridiculous. However when a cleric like Swaggert, untutored and ignorant of even basic science, makes scientific pronouncements, he (and many other fundamentalists) find that reasonable.

This quotation is important and memorable for several reasons. First, the Congressman is one of the relatively few highly educated Americans who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Most Christians and Jews do not interpret the ancient scripture literally. Most Christian and Jewish religious organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church, have no problem at all with evolution and the big bang theory. As a matter of fact, the scientist who developed the mathematics to explain the big bang was a Catholic Priest. Even some religious people who do not believe that that evolution is not an accurate interpretation, rarely claim that the Earth is only 9,000 years old. It is actually over 13 Billion years old. An anti-scientific view of the world is certainly within an American’s right, but the fact that this congressman was assigned by The Republican Party leadership to be a Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology given his belief structure is amazing, If the earth were only 9,000 years old, there is no way the global positioning satellites could tell us where we are, our nuclear arsenal would be unstable and dangerous, radiation medicine would not help anyone get well just for a few examples. A second noteworthy aspect is that the Congressman is not just stating that the millions of scientists and science teachers are wrong—in error. He accuses each and every one of them of acting as agents of Satan and that their motivation in studying and doing science is to undermine his and others faith in God and that none of them has any belief in or desire for a personal Savior. It is rare that this type of un-American behavior is found in a member of Congress who claims that any person who disagrees with his religions views or has different Biblical interpretations is an agent from Hell. The founding fathers created the First Amendment to cope with and even tolerate the few who had the extreme and unrealistic views of this Congressmen.