Early days
Charles was born into a well-to-do family; but tragedy struck when his mother died whilst he was only eight years old. His grandmother and great-grandmother had both died of drink: this gave young Charles a lifelong horror of alcoholism. His father, a respected physician, wanted him to be a doctor, and sent him up to Edinburgh to read medicine. But Charles had a very sensitive nature, and could not bear the sight of blood or of patients' sufferings. He was sent down without completing his course. Next he went to Cambridge where he scraped a pass degree in Theology. His father was an agnostic, and his own faith very shaky: as his grandfather said, it was just enough to make "a feather bed to catch a falling Christian"³. He knew he could never enter the ministry, so at the age of 23 he embarked on the survey ship HMS Beagle for a five year cruise in South American waters. Here he did quite brilliant field work on the many species of birds and animals he encountered.
The Theory of Evolution
Returning in 1836, he abandoned all pretensions to faith in Christ, and began work on his hypothesis of Evolution. It was not a novel idea; it went back to Anaximander (d. 547 BC). He read Sir Charles Lyell's book The Principles of Geology (1830), which tried to account for the present condition of the earth's surface by a process of gradual development. By 1840 Darwin had formulated his general theory of evolution, but held back from publishing it until 1858 when he saw an article by AR Wallace which he thought was an attempt to steal his thunder. So the book appeared in November 1859, and the whole first edition sold out in one day. Its thesis is that plants and animals prey on each other in order to exist. Those adapting themselves quickest to their environment survive. New species form as only the fittest of the survivors propagate and reproduce: i.e. "Natural Selection".
Repercussions to the theory
Carnegie and Rockefeller used it to justify their cut-throat business methods. Karl Marx used it to develop his political theory, and wanted to dedicate Das Kapital (1867) to Darwin (who refused the honour). Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena, who devised the now abandoned theory of embryonic recapitulation, used Darwinism to magnify the Germans as the master race and justify the elimination of lesser breeds. This was taken up by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. In theology it led to the evolutionary theory of the Bible. According to Karl Graf and Julius Wellhausen, Moses did not write the Pentateuch; different traditions (J,E,D and P) were harmonised and brought together by editors in the 5th century BC. There is no revelation; "prophecies" are history rewritten and backdated to resemble prophecy. The early chapters of Genesis are mythological, characters like Job, Jonah and Daniel are fictitious˜ and so on.
Second Thoughts
Darwin was alarmed. He complained to Lady Hope (wife of Admiral Sir James Hope) "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them". Lady Hope was the leader of the Temperance Movement, which Darwin supported because of the history of alcoholism in his family.
Conversion and Recantation
On his first visit to Tierra del Fuego, Darwin had commented on the primitive savagery of the inhabitants; saying no-one could tame them. Imagine his reaction when on his second visit years later, he heard the church bell summoning these now well-dressed ex-savages to church for Morning Prayer! He was so amazed that he became a life-long subscriber and benefactor to the South American Missionary Society (SAMS). In the last year of his life, Charles was bed-ridden. When Lady Hope called on him, she found him reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews. "Hebrews, the Royal Book, I call it. Isn't it grand?" he said. He then urged her to open the summer-house in his large garden in Downe near Bromley, Kent, and get the evangelist James Fegan (of Fegan's Orphanage) to hold a series of evangelistic meetings there. ²"I want you to speak too. Speak about Christ Jesus and his salvation. Is not that the best theme?" These meetings were held, and Darwin's butler and cook were among those converted. Darwin's last words, spoken to his last visitor, Mr AH Nicholls of the Bromley and Kentish Times, were "How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done".
Ben Crick