Charles Darwin ja uskonnot

Yksi Puheenvuoron tunnetuimmista koomikoista kuvitteli eräässä keskustelussa tällaisia: ”Darwin hylkäsi hetkeksi jumalan, koska hänen lapsensa sairastelivat ja osa kuoli.”

Hetkeksi? Omaelämäkerrassaan, ihan viimeisinä vuosinaan, Charles Darwin kuvasi juurta jaksain kehityksensä agnostikoksi.

Siteerataan nyt ihan kunnolla, ettei jää epäselvyyksiä. Tekijänoikeusongelmiahan puolentoista vuosisadan takaiset klassikkotekstit eivät tuota:

”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.”

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”I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music.”

Charles Darwin ei koskaan kutsunut itseään ateistiksi, mutta syystä tai toisesta muuan raittiusliikeaktiivi ja evankelista Lady Hope (Elizabeth Reid Cotton) väitti vuonna 1915 vierailleensa Darwinin kuolinvuoteella vuonna 1882 ja kuulleensa tämän katuvan niin luonnonvalintateoriaa kuin kristinuskosta luopumista. Darwinin perheenjäsenet kutsuivat tarinaa Lady Hopen hallusinaatioksi.

jpvuorela
Tampere

Vuonna 1955 syntynyt toimittaja, yhteiskuntatieteilijä ja isoisä. Jazz forever.

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