For the last time: Darwin was not an atheist

Kenneth Hynek • 16th Sep 2009 • Religion, Atheism, Religion, Christianity, Religion, Evolutionary Creationism, History
atheism, Charles Darwin, Christ, Christianity, Doug Philips, faith, God, Hell

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As much as I generally enjoy reading the No Apologies blog, they do have the annoying tendency to run crap like this every once in a while. In this case, the article excerpts (I can only assume in a favourable light) an article by Doug Philips entitled “Charles Darwin: His Personal Testimony as an Atheist, God Hater, and Reviler of Christianity.”

To be fair, Darwin was no Christian, at least not into his later years. The man struggled with his faith for several reasons, including both personal tragedies and an inability to reconcile or understand how a just and merciful God could allow the existence of a place like Hell, much less permit that any soul be sent there for all eternity.

But this does not necessarily mean he was a reviler; indeed, it means simply that he (like many) was ranked among the “lost sheep” of which Christ spoke. The charge of being an atheist and God-hater is similarly specious and inaccurate; even unto his deathbed, Darwin professed his belief in the involvement of a divine creator in the order of nature, and moreover disclaimed any philosophical association with atheism. that doesn’t make him a Christian, of course, and by no means suggests that he necessarily came to know salvation in the hereafter…but it is to say that there is more distance than none between Christian faith and atheism.

Darwin ended his days neither as a Christian or an atheist; he fell somewhere between the two. Unfortunately, too many foolish people on both sides of a needless controversy dishonestly continue to insist that he was an atheist in his later life.