Why Darwin rejected intelligent design

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2013

Today, many would assume that Charles Darwin absolutely rejected any claim of intelligent design in nature. However, review of his initial writings reveals that Darwin accepted some aspects of this view. His conceptualization of design was founded on both the cosmological and the teleological ideas from classical natural theology. When Darwin discovered the dynamic process of natural selection, he rejected the old teleological argument as formulated by William Paley. However, he was never able to ignore the powerful experience of the beauty and complexity of an intelligently designed universe, as a whole. He corresponded with Asa Gray on religious themes, particularly touching the problem of pain and intelligent design in nature. The term "intelligent design" was probably introduced by William Whewell. Principally for theological and philosophical reasons, Darwin could only accept the concept for the universe as a whole, not with respect to individual elements of the living world. M UCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN through the years of the clash between Darwinism and natural theology, and the basic tenants of this debate are well understood (Gillispie 1959; Bowler 1977; Ruse 2003; McGrath 2011). However, the literature is still growing, and one may wonder if anything new may yet be added. Of these new literary sources, one of the richest is the online Darwin Correspondence Project, which makes it possible to search and read the full texts

The American Biology Teacher, 1997

Figure 1. The HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan near Tierra del Fue o, late in 1832, from a painting by Conrad Martens appearing in Robert FitzRoy's Narrative of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839). FEW biology texts published in the past century fail to mention Charles Darwin, his voyage, and the subsequent discovery of the natural selection mechanism for evolution. Unfortunately, in most texts, the discovery and implications of evolution are l This image courtesy of Lightbinders' Darwin CD-ROM 2nd Edition. For further information about the Darwin CD-ROM, please contact Lightbinders,

The Skeptic, 2015

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is best known for his major contributions to evolutionary theory. In 1859, Darwin published his theory of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution in his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species. This book provided compelling evidence overcoming the scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. The basic principles of his theory have been shown to be correct and are now widely accepted as the basis of mainstream zoology, botany and ecology. On the other hand, in a later book Darwin got it wrong with the mechanisms of inheritance. The empirical rules of genetics, based solely on observational results, were largely understood since Gregor Mendel’s ‘wrinkled pea’ experiments in the 1860s. The postulated units of inheritance were called genes, but in Charles Darwin’s time it was not understood where genes were located in the body or what they physically consisted of. Darwin knew that there must have been a physical mechanism for inheritance, but his speculations about it – called pangenesis – were incorrect. Fortunately for the credibility of his theory of evolution by natural selection, he published these speculations later in a separate 1868 book titled Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.

Theory of evolution is a privileged field for studies on History of Science, as there is a huge number of primary and secondary sources available. Despite the well known fact that the idea of natural selection was conceived twenty years prior to the publication of Origin of Species, few authors discuss the reasons of this delay taking into account the way the own book was written. This article discusses the changes in the conception of adaptation that Charles Darwin experienced when writing his most famous book. There was a sudden and clear break from the Anglican tradition of Natural Theology, a firm base in the Christian Anglican doctrine, what rises the issue of the occurrence of an insight in the development of the evolutionary theory.

Philosophy of Science allows us to compare contrasting theories. This paper is a critique of Thomas Kuhn's argument on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions through a discussion of Darwin's revolutionary Theory of Evolution and its expostulation with Paley's Design Hypothesis.

2009

He had travelled most of the major coastlines of the globe. For five years at a stretch. He had surveyed the flora and fauna of the islands, coastal waterfronts, and the nearby peninsula. He had also studied the marine reefs, landmass, rocks, soil and climatic characteristics. He had collected crates of specimens from the entire area under survey. And in the process there were two metamorphoses in his life – one academic and the other ideological. He had started the journey across the Atlantic in 1831 with a view to making a secure career in geology; but when he came back to the shores of England in 1836 he had already embarked on the path to become a biologist – and a foremost biologist of the nineteenth century. Second, he had boarded the ship HMS Beagle as a devout Christian; and five years later, when he set foot on the banks of the Thames, he had turned into an agnostic. Yes, you have rightly guessed that we are talking of Charles Robert Darwin. Since last year we are observing...

Playing the game of bridge while using the rules of chess obviously posits a logical impossibility. The two games fundamentally differ from each other. Such a scenario seems ludicrous even to contemplate; however, since the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, Christians subscribing to the doctrine of the inerrancy of Holy Scripture have played such a game in trying to comprehend the biblical account of creation (theology = bridge) in the light of Darwin's theory of natural selection and speciation (science = chess). Christian theologians, scientists, and lay people who have played the game are the losers. The reason for their loss: the rules of the game for doing theology are not complementary with the rules of scientific inquiry. Yet, in the sincere attempt to engage and respond to the challenges posed by the theory of evolution by natural selection, Christians have repeatedly in the last 145 years tried to play "bridge" using the rules of "chess." William Dembski of Baylor University, one of the staunchest advocates of this approach, has reinstated a very old argument along these lines known as Intelligent Design; in Darwin's day William Paley's Natural Theology, published in 1802, offers much of the same argument with his famous line that a "watch must have had a maker."' The premise of the arguments is that somehow science helps to understand theology. In Unapologetic Apologetics, Dembski writes: The basic concepts with which science has operated these last several hundred years are no longer adequate, certainly not in an information age, certainly not in an age where design is empirically detectable. Science faces a crisis of basic concepts. The way out of Larry Witham, By Design (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), 41. Witham extensively traces the "Design movement" throughout the 20th century, giving further historical background when necessary. 1 this crisis is to expand science to include design. To reinstate design within science is to liberate science, freeing it from restrictions that were always and now have become intolerable.' Dembski's assertion likely falls on deaf ears within most of today's scientific community because, as John Greene convincingly demonstrates in his intriguing analysis entitled The Death of Adam, the conviction that the world has a concerned, intimate designer has increasingly waned since the time of Descartes. Greene portrays the Reverend John Ray as the first modern creationist to counter the then new Cartesian worldview, which he characterizes as a theistic, atomic hypothesis which eventually leads to a mechanical and then mutable world. Greene writes: Ray's main concern was with the second heresy, namely, the atomic hypothesis of Democritus and Epicurus, according to which the universe and all of its productions had resulted from chance collisions of atoms moving at random in empty space. In its ancient, atheistic form this doctrine had been amply refuted many times, said Ray, but of late a theistic version of the same hypothesis had been advanced by Descartes and his followers on the Continent. These writers explicitly rejected the idea that mankind could understand the final causes, or purposes, for which things had been made and undertook `to solve all the Phoenomena of Nature, and to give an account of the Production and Efformation of the Universe, and all the corporeal Beings therein, both celestial and terrestrial, as well animate as inanimate, not excluding Animals themselves, by a slight Hypothesis of matter so and so divided and mov'd.'3 The latter portion of this quotation comes from the 1690 publication of Ray's work itself, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. Greene claims that throughout Ray seeks to reaffirm the Christian doctrine of the creation. Comparing Dembski's work with Ray's nearly 400 years earlier leads to the conclusion that little has changed substantively in the argument; obviously Dembski advances the argument for design using modem scientific data, but the theme remains the same. An important element that has lured the Christian church into playing the wrong game

The British Journal for the History of Science, 1975

PROFESSOR JACOB W. GRUBER has argued convincingly that Darwin was not the original Naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle's second voyage to survey the coasts of South America. 1 The evidence, clearly marshalled by Gruber, shows that Robert McCormick, a Royal Navy surgeon, was appointed to the Beagle for the express purpose of making natural history collections, in addition to his primary duty as Ship's Surgeon. At first the two men got on well enough, going ashore together in the Azores to collect specimens. Then at the Beagle's second port of call in South America-Rio de Janeiro-Darwin moved into lodgings ashore. As a civilian, he had no duties on board ship, and he could further his collecting, since he wanted terrestrial rather than marine specimens, by staying in port while the ship sailed on its surveying mission in local waters. The preferential treatment of Darwin by the Beagle's Captain, Robert FitzRoy, was too much for McCormick to take. He chose to be invalided back to England, there to find another ship, rather than to accept the fact that his official collections would be inferior to Darwin's private ones. McCormick had to wait until 1839, when he was appointed Surgeon and Zoologist to H.M.S. Erebus, for the long sea voyage that would give him the opportunity to make his reputation in natural history. McCormick sailed for the Antarctic with Captain James Clark Ross just after Darwin's Journal of researches-the account of the Beagle's voyage that McCormick might have written had he been granted FitzRoy's favour-brought its author public acclaim as a worthy British follower of Humboldt. No wonder McCormick could not bring himself to mention either Beagle or Darwin in his autobiography! In the pitiless eye of history it seems absurd that McCormick could have felt himself to be the equal of the man who overturned the accepted view of living nature. Had McCormick been more capable, he would have done more, on Erebus's Antarctic cruise from 1839 to 1843, than merely support the researches of his Assistant Surgeon and Botanist, Joseph Hooker. Yet few men are prepared to allow to others a greater merit than they grant themselves; they prefer, as McCormick did, to blame their poor fortune on lack of influence. He must have felt that his glorious opportunity had been usurped by Charles Darwin. His voyage on board the Beagle transformed Charles Darwin from an

2010

Abstract Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is central to modern biology, but is resisted by many people. This paper discusses the major psychological obstacles to accepting Darwin's theory. Cognitive obstacles to adopting evolution by natural selection include conceptual difficulties, methodological issues, and coherence problems that derive from the intuitiveness of alternative theories. The main emotional obstacles to accepting evolution are its apparent conflict with valued beliefs about God, souls, and morality.