Mere Theology

Dare I suggest that the same is true for Christianity, which currently affirms that we see things through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13.12), but rejoices that we shall one day see them with the clarity that is found only within the New Jerusalem

Neither theory predicts; both accommodate what can be observed. In celebrating Darwin, we also affirm the possibility of believing in a theory, a way of making sense of things, a ‘working hypothesis’, which is not finally confirmed, and may not ultimately be capable of final confirmation – yet which is found to be reliable.

This is a reminder that both scientific and religious theories find themselves confronted with mysteries, puzzles and anomalies which may give rise to intellectual or existential tensions, but do not require their abandonment.

In any classical philosophical theism or natural theology, God would be proposed as the best explanation of the way things are.

The core theme of this chapter has been Darwin’s belief that his theory of natural selection offered the best explanation of what could be observed in the living natural world. It is not true to state that science believes only what has been empirically proven. At points, inference is necessary, in which an hypothesis (such as a ‘missing link’ or an unobserved entity, such as ‘natural selection’) is postulated as the ‘best explanation’ of known facts or established observations. This is an accepted norm of scientific reasoning, and is not controversial.

My own reading of the evidence is that Darwin regarded religious beliefs as a private matter, and was reluctant to talk about his own religious commitments

While some might argue that Darwin may have made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, Darwin did not himself draw that conclusion

when the context demanded it, Darwin seems to have been willing, not merely to go on record concerning, but to emphasize, the consilience of religious faith and the theory of natural selection.

Yet Darwin’s travels on the Beagle led him to witness events which called into question his early belief in divine providence. For example, while in South America, Darwin witnessed at first hand the terrible struggle for existence faced by the natives of Tierra del Fuego; he saw the devastating effects of an earthquake; and he began to grasp the magnitude of the staggering numbers of species that had become extinct – each of which, according to Paley, was providentially created and valued by God. We can see here the beginnings of the erosion of any belief in divine providence which would become characteristic of the later Darwin. If a crisis point was reached, it may have been through the death of Darwin’s daughter Annie in 1851, at the age of ten, which Darwin’s biographer James Moore sees as marking a watershed in Darwin’s religious convictions.28 Yet the origins of this development date from much earlier in his life.

Kingsley singled out Darwin’s work on orchids as ‘a most valuable addition to natural theology’.25 Insisting that the word ‘creation’ implies process as much as event, Kingsley went on to argue that Darwin’s theory clarified the mechanism of creation. ‘We knew of old that God was so wise that he could make all things; but, behold, he is so much wiser than even that, that he can make all things make themselves.’