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The religious views of Stephen Gould and Charles Darwin - Special Issue: Science and Religion: Conflict or Conciliation?

Skeptical Inquirer, July-August, 1999 by Martin Gardner

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Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason, and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the "Origin of Species"; and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?

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I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.

When Bertrand Russell was sent to prison for opposing England's entrance into the first World War, the warden asked him what his religion was. Russell replied "agnostic." After asking Russell how to spell it, the warden sighed and said, "Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God." "This remark," Russell adds in his autobiography, "kept me cheerful for about a week."

Note

1. An unexpurgated edition of Darwin's autobiography, edited by his granddaughter Nora Barlow, was published in 1958 and is currently available as a Norton paperback. Earlier editions of the autobiography had been heavily censored by Darwin's family, mainly to remove Darwin's biting criticisms of some of his contemporaries.

The religious views of Stephen Gould and Charles Darwin - Special Issue: Science and Religion: Conflict or Conciliation?

Skeptical Inquirer, July-August, 1999 by Martin Gardner

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