Darwin what the heck man?!?!?
Offline I have always wondered why when talking about Darwin, many religious folks believe he was an atheist. From everything I have read and learned about him, even at the exhibition at the ROM, he was at best an agnostic, although a christian for most of his early life until his voyage on the Beagle, but he never stopped believing in a god, although it wasn't the god of the bible for the most part. I mean I get the fact that he is considered the father of evolution, well the one who it is given credit to, but at no point was he said to be an atheist. So what's the confusion? When talking about evolution and if one believes in the facts of it or not, it does not automatically mean someone is an atheist, nor that Darwin was an atheist, just that they believe in the scientific theory of evolution.
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Seems to be a pattern among the religious. Early detractors of the historicity of the Bible were not atheists, but in fact were Christians. Bultmann, one of the most damaging scholars to the historicity and validity of the New Testament, was a Christian theologian, who also happened to be good friends with Martin Heidegger. Straus, Kasemann, the Dutch Radicals, etc...all Christians. They adjusted their faith, in the sense that they compartmentalized it, because the evidence was not adequately adhering to the facts.
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umm , maybe the definition of god, basically still owned by the dogma religious is the problem ..... Fuck them dogmists. I AM an Atheist, I AM 100% GOD as YOU ....
No idols before for me ..... not you ..... matter .... energy ..... all is one. What shall we call it , the "ONE" ??? GAWED ? Whatever ..... All is equal scientifically speaking of the awe.
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Same applies to the Big Bang. Lemaitre was a priest.
Darwin was set to be a member of the clergy before he went on the Beagle journey. It wasn't exactly the same kind of thing as it is today, but nonetheless, he was basically ok with the idea. In his personal journals, he often commented on the agreeable nature of the career choice. There isn't any particular indication that he was a believer -- the clergy was a career choice for him, not a means to evangelism.
From his journals and other people's recollections of him, we don't have any indication that religion was a personal part of his life. He seemed essentially indifferent to it. He recognized, of course, the heretical nature of his own research, and it appears that he wrote Origin in such a way as to minimize the flack he would receive from the church, at least temporarily.
There's no indication that his research, or his theory of evolution was meant to harm religion. Despite the obvious contradiction with the creation myth, we have no indication that Darwin had any particular animosity towards organized religion. It's not hard to imagine that he saw himself more like Galileo -- a champion for objective truth, whatever that truth happened to be.
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