Monday, June 15, 2009

Charles Darwin Believed that God Exists

I'm doing some research on evolution for the Spanish edition of my book, One Minute Answers to Skeptics (due out later this year) and I came across an interesting quote by Charles Darwin. I found it in Antony Flew's book, There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Flew, who is the atheist referred to in the title, points out that even Charles Darwin believed in God’s existence.

Darwin said, “[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far 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 (p. 106).

This is an interesting admission by the man who many atheists believe liberated them from belief in God. Darwin realized his theory was only an attempt to show how life may have evolved, not how the universe originated. The theory of evolution does nothing to show how the universe came into being.