Annie’s death was not the cause of Darwin’s agnosticism 6 Jul 2009 That rough punk of evolution, Mark Pallen, has a table up documenting the formulation and spread of the story that it was the horrible death of Darwin’s favoured daughter, Annie, which, he reckons, is not true. He’s working up a paper on the matter, he says. But Darwin’s stated reasons in the Autobiography, that he found the Christian religion morally outrageous and intellectually unconvincing, and that he was older when he gave up his religion, say otherwise. We’ll have to wait for Pallen’s article, but some people find it hard to accept that anyone, let alone one of the clearest thinkers of all time, might choose a religious position for intellectual reasons. Keep an eye out for it. Evolution History Religion
Evolution Supernatural selection: Book review 5 May 2010 I have received a copy of a forthcoming book, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved by psychologist Matt Rossano. Despite the title, it turns out to be an interesting, although I think ultimately flawed and incomplete, account of religion as a natural process. As I read it, I will do a series… Read More
Politics Secularism as protection for religion 9 Oct 200818 Sep 2017 As some of you may have figured out by now, my overarching Evil Plan is to get people thinking about their basic assumptions. Even when those people are the “good guys” and free thinkers. So in service of that I am giving a public talk for the Secular Freethinkers society… Read More
Evolution Popes, evolution, and creation 1 Feb 2008 A rather cute article at the Catholic News Service says this: In commentaries, papal speeches, scientific conferences and philosophical exchanges, the Vatican has been focusing more and more on the relationship between God and evolution. From the outside, this may seem a reaction to the U.S. debate over creationism versus… Read More
The autobiography is – as you know – a very imperfect source of information about Darwin. Pallen’s going to have to do a lot better than that if he’s going to correct Moore. Unless he can actually do some digging in the letters, my gut feeling is that he’s fighting a losing game here. (And if he wants to get this published in an historical journal, it’s best to avoid the “spread of a myth” angle. It’s just not interesting.)
If you have evidence of a positive sort that A believed X for reasons R, and a hypothesis that A actually believed X for nonreasons Y, and the argument requires that you must not only disbelieve the evidence, but do so in several instances, because of a prior commitment to the view that people don’t believe things for stated reasons but rather because of emotional and economic forces they are partially if at all aware of, then I would say there’s something wrong here. The Autobiography is not, as I happen to know, all that Mark is relying upon; and the myth is interesting because of who said it and why. And it’s not for a history journal (I also happen to know 🙂 ).