This morning, I was walking down the sixth grade hallway here at school. On the walls, students were displaying posters they had made containing information about various scientists. The one about Charles Darwin caught my eye. Most of the information seemed to be accurate, but in two spaces, the student claimed that Darwin begged for God’s forgiveness because he had “gone against the word of God.”
Now, I don’t mean to debate Darwin’s theories or the school’s teaching of his theories. I’m just curious about the claim that Darwin prayed for forgiveness as he laid dying. I can easily imagine the student getting that from some fundy website or book. Something along the lines of “Here’s his wacky theories, but he felt bad about them.”
So, anyone know if there is any truth to this claim?
I’m not saying that this site is necessarily more reliable than a wackjob fundy creationist (well actually I am, but we’ll pretend I’m not), but it is an alternative viewpoint…
I know you’re not looking for a debate, but I think it’s only fair to note that from a scientific point of view, it doesn’t really matter whether Darwin recanted his work on ‘descent with modification’ on his deathbed or not; the theory and evidence stands on its own. The suggestion that Darwin recanted–which as Colophon’s links show, is at best unsubstanciated–is an irritating burr; I have a coworker that brings this up repeatedly as if it undermines all of the independently verifiable evidence for evolution and natural selection.
Yeah, it’s just that this was a science assignment (my own son is in the sixth grade class that did these. His scientist was geologist William Morris Davis.) The kid who did Darwin was supposed to come up with interesting facts about his childhood, adulthood, scientific acheivement(s), and other interesting facts. The student wrote that Darwin prayed for forgiveness because he “went against God’s word”. That sounded like fundy claptrap to me. I would imagine that the teacher teaches evolution because the curriculum says she must (and it’s on the state tests), but she probably rolls her eyes the whole time. The student accurately (for a sixth grader) presented Darwin’s scientific acheivement, but added the “against God’s word” stuff sort of as a “he didn’t really mean it, though.” Bugs me.
Can I ask why you assume it’s the teacher’s input that generated these lines? I am assuming that there might have been some work at home that went along with this assignment. If that is the case, I could easily see the input coming from the parents and the teacher deciding that it wasn’t their fight to correct (or possibly does not have the knowledge to correct it).
When you say that “I was walking down the sixth grade hallway here at school,” is that because you are also an employee of the school? Or were you dropping off the kid or some such? If the former, why not just ask the teacher in question? Keep it non-combative. Something like, “MaryJaneJoBob, I liked the posters the kids did on that assignment; my son enjoyed [some part of it]. I noticed these lines on whatsisface’s poster. I’ve heard that before, but I have also heard refutations. What do you think about this story?”
I will say that the thought of a science teacher teaching something antithetical to science drives me up the friggin wall faster than a pothead climbing the pantry shelves for the doritos.
It’s not surprising, though, that this hypothetical recantation is brought up so much by religious anti-evolutionists. Generally speaking, these folks believe in things because they were told to them by authority (priests, parents, etc) and evidence played no part. I think they are falsely thinking that people believe in science for the same reason, an authority on high told them it was so. They think Darwin recanting evolution would have the same effect on a scientist as a Catholic bishop being told some theological point by the Pope.
I apologize for the misunderstanding. I do not think that input from the teacher caused the recantation story to appear on the poster. I am confident that the teacher presented the material appropriately. The Darwin story probably came from some other source. I may have been off base in maligning the teacher. I’ve been a bit grumpy this morning.
I was walking down the hallway because I am also a teacher in the school. I may visit with the teacher later. My conversation won’t be a complaint (because, really, I don’t have one). I am just curious about how she approaches Darwin. In my opinion, the student doing the Darwin poster completed the requirements of the assignment. Were I the teacher, I might use the story of Darwin’s prayer as an opportunity to discuss quality of sources and whether a story can be substantiated. In this case, it seems that the story may be apocryphal.
May be? Seeing as there has been zero evidence presented that it is true, and first-hand testimony that it is false, I would call it total BS, not “apocryphal.”
I’ve got two boys in Texas public schools (4th and K), and I wasn’t aware that evolution was taught in elementary school. That’s great - the earlier, the better. I’ve started teaching my 4th grader some of the concepts since second grade or so. I had evolution in high school here in Texas in the 70s, but so much of biology always seemed to me to be just rote memorization of kingdoms, phyla, family, etc. Once I accepted the evolution explanation (in college, because in high school I was a fundy), it was like someone switched on the light and the subject suddenly became interesting. The old quote that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” is really true.
This is an interesting perspective that hadn’t occurred to me. I often hear people ask, or speak of, “believing” in evolution. Such a concept has never made sense to me – evolution does not require faith or belief. Evolution is what it is. I may choose not to believe, but that doesn’t make it go away. I could also choose not to believe the theory of gravity, but my shoes will still stay planted on the floor. The story as presented in Genesis, however, does require faith in order to be believed. There is zero evidence supporting this story. I suppose that folks who believe the Genesis Creation story must assume that those that do not believe it (in the fundamentalist way) must “believe” something else.
Charles Darwin, before accompanying Fitzroy on the Beagle, was seriously considering entering the Church of England ministry. In later years, he appears to have been relatively agnostic in his beliefs. But I suspect nobody actually knows what or whether he believed.
Religious != fundamentalist. He may very well have sent for a priest and made his peace with God, and if that happened, which is damn well not proven by any means, it would have nothing to do with his own credence in his theory, the validity of that theory as it has been refined by students of evolutionary biology ever since, or much of anything else.
It is only in the mental constructs of Creationists that a belief in God and acceptance of a well-documented scientific theory that contradicts their particular take on one chapter of Scripture, are at odds.
(Pardon my debating in GQ, but the above statements are either fact or logical inferences from the known data.)
Another version of this canard, which circulated in the 19th c., was that Charles Darwin lay on his deathbed screaming for forgiveness - but it was too late, and God cursed him by twisting his dying features into the shape of a monkey, in mockery of his blasphemous theories. [no sources for this were produced, of course]
At least as far as the last decade of his life is concerned - which is the relevant context for judging Lady Hope’s account - the last sentence seems overstated. After all, the Autobiography, written at this time and not intended for publication, contains a relatively detailed description of his views on religion. While one wouldn’t overstate this as an example of someone being unusually candid - indeed Janet Browne has interpreted it as merely another instance of “the archetypal Victorian crisis of faith” - it is him being privately very explicit about what he doesn’t believe.
James Moore develops the theme in his The Darwin Legend (Hodder & Stoughton, 1994), the most detailed examination of the Lady Hope myth to date, that the recurrant pattern in arguments over Darwin’s beliefs about religion has been people trying to muster him in their own camp:
If anything, the interesting aspect of the myth is not Lady Hope’s story at all - she was pretty clearly a batty old widow, who probably didn’t anticipate the seriousness with which some would take her anecdote - but the readiness with which it plays in certain audiences.
In fact, the whole concept of a biography project on famous scientists can be quite misleading for just this reason. To really understand the scientific method, one must appreciate that ultimately science is based on observation, not on authorities and personalities. This must be weighed against the motivational value of adding human interest to the syllabus – learning science can get dry without some inkling of the history and people behind the development of the subject. One hopes that such sidelights don’t come at the expense of actual science knowledge and meaningful lab experiences.