God Without Religion

by Michael Arnheim

Was Darwin a Deist?

  What about the religious position of Charles Darwin himself, the Daddy of natural selection? Dawkins is quick to invoke his sacred name, yet Darwin’s view of the process was not quite the same as Dawkins’s. Instead of seeing the whole process (after the emergence of life on earth) as a purely automatic and non-random process, Darwin saw it as divided into two, with the bigger features governed by “fixed laws” or “designed laws” while the details were left to “chance”. This fits the facts of evolution much better than Dawkins’s view and also happens to fit in better with deism than with either atheism or theism. Does this make Darwin a deist? Very likely, as we shall see later on in this chapter.

  Deism vs. Atheism & Theism

  On balance, therefore, deism has the advantage over both atheism and theism at each of the three stages of the development of the universe. It does beg the unanswerable question that Dawkins so enjoys posing whenever he comes across any form of Design, “Who designed the designer?” But theism of course begs the same question. And, as we have seen, the explanations favoured by the atheists at all three stages likewise cry out in vain for an explanation of how they began.

  Deism an Embarrassment to Atheists

  No wonder therefore that atheists like Richard Dawkins are so anxious to brush deism under the rug! This is done in several different ways.

  The New Atheists are chiefly concerned to attack organised religion and the belief in a personal God, or theism. In the process they either lump deism together with theism or try to convert deism into a form of atheism. Both of these approaches are wrong. Dawkins admits that “no doubt many” American Founding Fathers were deists, but adds gratuitously: “Certainly their writings on religion in their own time leave me in no doubt that most of them would have been atheists in ours.”139 Dawkins does not cite any of these writings. But a glance, for example, at the writings of Thomas Jefferson makes it clear that he was no atheist. The obvious starting point is the Declaration of Independence itself, in which there are references to “Nature and Nature’s God”, to a “Creator” and even to “divine Providence”, the first two being basic deistic concepts and the last essentially a theistic one — and nothing in the document being in the least atheistic. Right at the outset we read that the basis of the claim for independence is “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”, and we then come to the most oft-quoted part of the Declaration of all: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”140

  In The God Delusion Dawkins is anxious to stress that the “God delusion” of his title refers only to belief in a personal God. It “does not refer to the God of Einstein” and certain “other enlightened scientists”. He continues: “That is why I needed to get Einsteinian religion out of the way to begin with: it has a proven capacity to confuse.”141 The confusion that Dawkins is referring to is confusion between the personal God of theism and the impersonal God of deism.

  “Intellectual High Treason”

  Dawkins is obviously embarrassed by deism, as can be seen from his outburst at the end of this passage in The God Delusion:

  I wish that physicists would refrain from using the word God in their special metaphorical sense. The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.142 [Emphasis added]

  This remarkable accusation of “intellectual high treason” levelled against physicists who believe in an impersonal God reveals just how much of an embarrassment deism is to Dawkins. The “deliberate confusion” to which Dawkins refers is confusion between deism and theism. But who is to blame for this confusion? Not the theists, who tend to regard believers in an impersonal God as heretics or infidels. And not the deists, who invariably specifically reject the personal God of organised religion. It is atheists who tend to lump together all kinds of belief in a God. And it serves the purposes of atheists to create this confusion, because it enables them to dismiss deism on the basis of arguments that are not applicable to deism but only to theism, which is much more vulnerable to attack by atheism than deism is.

  Darwin: “I Have Never Been an Atheist”

  Charles Darwin himself could probably be most accurately described as alternating between deism and agnosticism. Unlike some of his latter-day disciples, Darwin was a modest man who was not afraid to express doubts about his beliefs and even his ideas. He was also a conflicted soul. But above all, Charles Darwin was not an atheist. Darwin’s unequivocal declaration that he had never been an atheist occurs in a letter dated 7 May 1879 from Darwin to John Fordyce, a sceptic and the author of a book titled Aspects of Scepticism. The body of the letter in its entirety reads as follows:

  It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist & an evolutionist. — You are right about Kingsley. Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, is another case in point — What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one except myself. — But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. Moreover whether a man deserves to be called a theist depends on the definition of the term: which is much too large a subject for a note. In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. — I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.143

  Darwin even went so far as to attempt to reconcile religion and evolution. The second and all later editions of Origin of Species contain this remarkable passage:

  I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. A celebrated author and divine has written to me that “he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws”.144

  The “celebrated author and divine” referred to here was none other than Charles Kingsley (1819–75), the author of The Water-Babies who was very close to the royal family and who became an enthusiastic supporter of Darwin’s while remaining committed to Christianity. The passage of Kingsley’s letter which Darwin quotes ends with the remark: “I question whether the former be not the loftier thought.”145 In other words, belief in a God who designed a few basic models capable to self-development and variation may be preferable to the conventional belief in a God who created every new biological feature separately. Although neither Kingsley nor Darwin uses the word “deism” to describe this idea of a God who designed some basic forms and then left them to develop themselves, this picture accords well with the idea of the impersonal God of deism. It is important to note that this new understanding that Kingsley describes is not just what he believes but what he attributes to Darwin — and Darwin’s proud quoting of this letter in Origin of Species indicates that Darwin did not disagree with this.

  Contrary to the New Atheists, Darwin made it clear that he saw no necessary conflict between religion and evolution. Compare this with Dawkins’s position as stated in a talk on “Militant Atheism” given in America in April 2007: “Many individual evolutionists, like the Pope, are also religious, but I think they’re deluding themselves. I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith.” And: “Evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion.”146

  As we have seen, Charles Darwin admits that his “judgment often fluctuates” but insists that even in his “most extreme fluctuations” he never was an atheist. Darwin settles for the label “agnostic”, indicating doubt about whether there is a God or not — which of cou
rse is not the same thing at all as being an atheist. In his posthumously published Autobiography Darwin applies the label “agnostic” to himself again, specifically in regard to “the mystery of the beginning of all things”: “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.”147 And in 1917 his son Sir Francis Darwin stated that he had “no reason whatever to believe that he [Charles Darwin] ever altered his agnostic point of view”.148

  Probably the most comprehensive statement of Darwin’s beliefs is to be found in a letter of 22 May 1860 from Darwin to his friend, the leading American botanist Asa Gray, who was a staunch supporter of Darwin’s and at the same time a committed Christian (or, as Darwin himself later described him in his 1879 letter to Fordyce quoted above, “an ardent Theist and evolutionist”). In this important 1860 letter Darwin agrees with his friend that his own views “are not at all necessarily atheistical” and seems to be thinking of a hierarchy of natural laws:

  With respect to the theological side of the question, this is always painful to me. — I am bewildered. — I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larvae] feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. — Let each man hope and believe what he can. — Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws, — a child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by the action of even more complex laws, — and I can see no reason why a man, or other animals, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws; and that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence. But the more I think the more bewildered I become.149

  Darwin’s two-tier view of nature is encapsulated in this succinct sentence: “I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.” Where do these “designed laws” come from? Surprisingly, perhaps, Darwin “can see no reason why” these laws may not have been “expressly designed by an omniscient Creator” — and he then retreats again into agnosticism: “But the more I think the more bewildered I become” — which picks up the beautiful evocative image at the end of the previous paragraph: “I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.”

  According to this, some laws take priority over others: the big features of nature are controlled by “fixed laws” designed by “an omniscient Creator”, with the details “left to the working out of what we may call chance”.

  This ties in with the brief statement of Darwin’s belief which occurs in a letter of 1870 to Darwin’s friend, the well-known botanist Sir Joseph Hooker appended to his Autobiography: “My theology is a simple muddle; I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed of design of any kind, in the details.”150 According to this there are only two categories: “blind chance” and “design”, with the big features being designed while the details are left to chance. This classification contrasts with that of Dawkins, who, as we have seen, insists that natural selection is quite distinct from either chance or design.151

  Darwin’s reason for his tiered view of nature appears to be two-fold. First, because nature does sometimes make apparent mistakes: e.g. people born deaf or blind, or with missing limbs. But the main reason for Darwin’s inability to accept that the whole universe is the result of design is the existence of suffering in the world. It should be recalled that when Darwin went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to read for the ordinary degree (his qualifications were not good enough for him to read for the Tripos or Honours degree!), his intention was to become a clergyman — and, though he lost his faith in Christianity, he always remained highly moralistic.

  Darwin admits that suffering may sometimes be useful for a moral purpose in man, but then adds:

  [W]hat advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.152

  Darwin here jettisons the whole idea of “an intelligent first cause” purely on the basis of suffering among “the lower animals”, which ties in with his remarks in the quoted letter to Asa Gray about his concerns involving wasps — and even the cruelty of cat-and-mouse play.

  Darwin’s Autobiography, which was written towards the end of his life and published posthumously, contains at least two contradictory passages, one rejecting intelligent design and the other going in the opposite direction:

  Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.153

  Compare this with:

  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 [than belief in the immortality of the soul]. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking 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.154

  The remark “and I deserve to be called a theist” is surprising, as Darwin clearly rejected the Christian idea of God because of the existence of cat-and-mouse cruelty, as we saw above. But Darwin later added:

  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.155

  However, in the second and later British editions of Darwin’s Origin of Species, there are at least two specific references to “the Creator”:

  Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator.156

  And again:

  Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of l
ife, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.157

  These references to “the Creator” do not appear in the original 1859 edition of Origin of Species.158 However, a possible reference to this passage occurs in a letter to J.D. Hooker of 29 March 1863, where Darwin expresses regret for using the Pentateuchal (i.e. Biblical, from the Five Books of Moses) “term of creation”:

  But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process. — It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.159

  Kenneth Miller’s Fundamental Mistake

  Kenneth Miller, a biologist who is both an evolutionist and a committed Roman Catholic, concludes his book Finding Darwin’s God by quoting the passage cited above from the end of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Miller comments: “What kind of God do I believe in? The answer is in those words. I believe in Darwin’s God.”160 This statement of Miller’s is just plain wrong. Miller is a theist and his God is the full-blown personal God of Christianity, precisely the type of God rejected by Darwin, as we have seen, because of the existence of suffering in the world.

  Why then does Dawkins commend Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God? Here’s what Dawkins said in a 2007 talk on “Militant Atheism”: “People like Kenneth Miller could be called a ‘godsend’ to the evolution lobby — (Laughter) — because they expose the lie that evolutionism is, as a matter of fact, tantamount to atheism.” This may give us the impression that Dawkins believes that evolutionism is compatible with religion. Yet, he continued by explicitly declaring that “evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion”, adding, as cited above, that religious evolutionists like the Pope were “deluding themselves” by thinking otherwise.161