I have been reading Janet Browne’s two-volume biography of Charles Darwin over the last month or so, when time permitted, and I just came upon a section (Section VII of Chapter 11, Volume 2, England’s Green and Pleasant Land, 431-434), which is worth quoting in full for its clarity and unflinching honesty. Darwin’s religious opinions are often sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, but these words are direct and convincing:
In [his] autobiography Darwin expressed startlingly harsh views on Christianity. Like many Victorian thinkers finally coming to terms with their loss of faith, he blamed his increasing doubts on the absence of any rational proof for God’s existence. No “sane man” would believe in miracles, he said; the Gospels were demonstrably not literal accounts of the past; comparative studies of the Hindu, Mohammedan, and Buddhist faiths, along with scholarly descriptions of primitive animism and spirit worship, showed that Christianity could not he regarded as a divine, monotheistic revelation. Formerly, he said, he had believed in a personal deity. He remembered standing in the Brazilian forest and his “conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.” Disbelief had only slowly “crept” over him. In fact, his account is distinctive in the annals of autobiographical writing for its lack of any pivotal moment of loss. Darwin had no epiphany. When he composed the Origin of Species he retained some religious views. But now, as he wrote, he said not even the grandest scenes would cause such feelings to swell.
To him, the God of the Christians was cruel.
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.