P
Punchy
Guest
"With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all [original italics] satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws. A child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by the action of even more complex laws, and I can see no reason why a man, or other animals, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws, and that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence. But the more I think the more bewildered I become; as indeed I probably have shown by this letter. Most deeply do I feel your generous kindness and interest. Yours sincerely and cordially, Charles Darwin" (Darwin to Asa Gray, [a minister] May 22, 1860)
In this letter, Darwin is speaking of intelligent design, not as a right-wing political movement, but as a theological and philosophical concept. That Darwin understood the evolutionary process to not be mutually exclusive with teleology should open the minds of those who believe that evolution is in and of itself an antireligious doctrine or a justification for atheism.
In this letter, Darwin is speaking of intelligent design, not as a right-wing political movement, but as a theological and philosophical concept. That Darwin understood the evolutionary process to not be mutually exclusive with teleology should open the minds of those who believe that evolution is in and of itself an antireligious doctrine or a justification for atheism.
