Jack the Bodiless

When would Darwin have said this?

He was no longer a "young" man when he "threw out" the Theory of Evolution (which he had worked on for decades: certainly not an "unformed idea").
Evolution is fact. If it hadn't been discovered by either Darwin or Wallace, it would eventually have been discovered by someone else.

Jack the Bodiless

Also, summerhouses are flimsy wooden sheds. They don't last forever. It's entirely possible that there had been a summerhouse in Darwin's garden, but that it wasn't there anymore when Darwin died.

Hobbs

If you're going to tell a lie, the first rule is to at least make it plausible. Others have mentioned the time he spent working on his ideas before publishing; I'll add some numbers.

He was raised a Christian, accepted it in his youth, and studied for the ministry in college, though he had more interest in "natural history" (biology and such). It was in his mid-twenties that he took his five year voyage on the Beagle and began accumulating evidence that led him to posit evolution as a way to account for natural history. He spent the next couple of decades accumulating more evidence, testing whether the new evidence fit his evolving theories, and modifying his theories to fit the evidence as necessary. Knowing his ideas would be a rather large challenge to existing theories, he also spent his time working on standard biology, mainly about barnacles, to establish himself as a serious and reliable scientist and scholar before publishing about evolution, so that people would at least take him seriously. In that effort he succeeded.

He published Origin of Species when he was 51, after accumulating and testing evidence for a quarter century. Hardly what would qualify either as a young man or unformed ideas. He was 62 when he published Descent of Man, applying evolution to the origin of humans. Definitely not a young man, certainly not young enough, as he was dying at age 73, to have mused about his youthful ideas in pondering his work on evolution. So any speculations about Darwin recanting his "youthful, unformed ideas" is poppycock.

I do not think, however, that Lady Hope necessarily lied about what she thought happened. I'm not thoroughly familiar with all of Darwin's writings, so I don't know for sure what he might have said about "social Darwinists." But I am familiar enough with his writings and thoughts to know that serious misgivings about the way in which conservatives were misunderstanding and misapplying biological evolution to support their own social policies would have been entirely within character for him.

I think it is quite likely that he could have expressed such misgivings (that conservatives were misapplying evolution in an attempt to support their social policies) to Lady Hope, and that she, given her outlook on life, science, etc, mistakenly took those misgivings to apply also to his own scientific work. Perhaps she reported her sincere (mis)understanding of the conversation to other Christians who shared her outlook (and her lack of scientific education and lack of understanding of the scientific issues), and they took the story even further to what to them and according to their outlook would have been a reasonable conclusion, i.e. Darwin "saw the light" on his deathbed. So, no one lied; but, due to a few transmissions of the story through people with a particular perspective on the issues which colored their perception of the events, an inaccurate story emerged. Not an intentional lie, but still false.

That is an entirely plausible scenario. At least, it is far more plausible than Darwin, at age 73, musing about his youthful, unformed ideas about which he had published a major tome barely a decade earlier and after 40 years of careful work.

But, as others have pointed out, even if this horribly implausible scenario is true, even if Darwin recanted evolution on his deathbed, the truth of evolution stands on the evidence, not on Darwin's say-so. Evolution isn't true because Darwin said so. Rather, Darwin said so because the evidence indicates that it is indeed true. And that evidence stands, it is still there, regardless of what Darwin might have believed as he might possibly have feared death so much that it clouded his thinking on scientific issues.

But besides being highly suspect, Darwin's alleged deathbed conversion is utterly irrelevant: so what if Darwin was a Christian? There are plenty of Christians who accept the reality of evolution.

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: Hobbs ]</p>

DMB

Re the question of supporting missionaries: it is certainly possible to think that xianity may have a beneficial effect on groups such as the Fuegans, and therefore to support missionary activity, without necessarily believing xian doctrine to be true.

This attitude can still be found among a few intellectuals and members of the ruling classes in England. I think it is best illustrated by Gibbon's remark in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Vesica

From all I have read about Darwin's life it seems clear that he began his life perhaps beliving in Christianity and was at least a 'social Christian' for most of his life...Privatly he did not believe...However he started no campaign about it. It is important to remember how pervasive Chrisitianity was in much of Europe for centuries...It was everywhere in the culture so belief was made somewhat irrelevant. Did Darwin celebrate Christmas in any way? Somehow I don't think it really matters!

His personal writings indicate that he was never trying to topple Christianity or challenge the church except in his own head/musings. We keep trying to set up a conflict or dichotmy that wasn't really there at the time!