supplemental material

Melvin Bragg is one of the most well known and respected BBC broadcasters and presenters. He is perhaps best known for his insightful interviews with intellectuals on a whole host of matters. Mostly on his show In Our Time. I’ve included a link to a three part series Bragg did on Darwin, as well as a link to his podcast on iTunes, and a link to Darwin’s classic work On the Origin of Species.

reflection

I’ve included this small reading from Darwin’s autobiography, because it beautifully expresses the struggle he had with being a pious man and a courageous scientific explorer. Darwin was religiously devoted in his youth, and remained deeply sensitive to the religious beliefs of those around him, especially those of his beloved wife.

Darwin’s religious belief was largely sustained by the classical notion of the Glory of God being witnessed in the beauty and mystery of the world.  He found this, not only personally convincing, but also philosophically sound. Like many of his day, he was convinced by the coherence and conclusions of the teleological argument. The most famous version of this in day way the argument from design put forward by the clergyman William Paley, who compared the structure of the world to the design of a watch. Paley argued that, in the same way a watch points to the existence of a watchmaker, the world points to the existence of a worldmaker. 

In the course of his famous voyage on the HMS Beagle, Darwin observed anomalies in the same biological species that pointed to the existence of a natural mechanism of adaptation. This discovery gradually lead to him to affirm an alternative explanation for the complexity and seeming design of the world. One that didn’t require a designer. By doing so, Darwin discovered a type of 'blind teleology’ that undermined the analogy Paley made between watch and world.

This lead Darwin to deeper, more philosophical questions. Questions that ultimately convinced him to leave aside his religious beliefs. 

In today’s reflection, you witness anything but an armchair rejection of religious belief. What you glimpse instead is the genesis of one of the most famous critiques of God as it gradually grew from the soul of a conflicted individual attempting to wrestle through the implications of his world-historical scientific discoveries in relation to his own deeply held faith, and the faith of those he loved. 

Autobiography

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) is the founder of modern biology, and one of the most influential intellectual figures of the 20th century. He developed the theory of natural selection through struggle and published his work in On the Origin of Species.

In this excerpt from Darwin’s autobiography he writes of how his work in evolution slowly eroded his religiosity. This section is from The Portable Atheist, Ed. Christopher Hitchens. The introduction to the reading was written by Hitchens.

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