Science, Religion, and the Human Experience

(Jacob Rumans) #1

222 life


Mistaken? or, Creation and Evolution, no. 36 of the Anti-Infidel Library (Boston: H. L.
Hastings, 1896), 25–26.



  1. A. C. Dixon,Reconstruction: The Facts against Evolution(N.p., n.d.), 18, from a
    copy in the Dixon Collection, Dargan-Carver Library of the Historical Commission of
    the Southern Baptist Convention, Nashville, Tennessee; A. T. Robertson, quoted in
    James Moore,The Darwin Legend(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1994), 119; An-
    drew Johnson, “The Evolution Articles,”Pentecostal Herald38 (September 29, 1926):
    6 (baboon boosters). See also the statement of Charles Kingsley quoted in Adrian
    Desmond,Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest(Reading, Mass.:
    Addison-Wesley, 1997), 288.

  2. James R. Moore, “Of Love and Death: Why Darwin ‘Gave Up Christianity,’ ” in
    History, Humanity and Evolution: Essays for John C. Greene, ed. James R. Moore (Cam-
    bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 195–230. See also Adrian Desmond and
    James Moore,Darwin(London: Michael Joseph, 1991), 314 (murder), 375–387 (Annie).

  3. Susan Budd,Varieties of Unbelief: Atheists and Agnostics in English Society, 1850–
    1960 (London: Heinemann, 1977), 104–107; Ronald L. Numbers,Darwinism Comes to
    America(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 40–43. Bernard Lightman,The
    Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge(Baltimore: Johns
    Hopkins University Press, 1987), 31, also plays down the role of science in the crea-
    tion of agnosticism. Frank Miller Turner, in a superb examination of six late Victori-
    ans who lost their faith in orthodox Christianity, describes George Romanes as “one
    of the very few men whose loss of faith in the truth of religion can be directly as-
    cribed to the influence of scientific naturalism”; see Turner,Between Science and Reli-
    gion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England(New Haven: Yale
    University Press, 1974), 143–144. See also Turner, “The Victorian Crisis of Faith and
    the Faith that Was Lost,” inVictorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change
    in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief, ed. Richard J. Helmstadter and Bernard Light-
    man (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 9–38. In his pioneering scientific
    study of the loss of belief among college students and scientists,The Belief in God and
    Immortality(Boston: Sherman, French, 1916), 282–288, James H. Leuba devotes a
    chapter to the causes of the rejection of traditional beliefs, but evolution does not ap-
    pear among them. Peter Bowler, however, has claimed that Darwinism “established a
    complete break between science and religion”; see hisThe Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-
    Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
    University Press, 1983), 27.
    In an influential analysis of the Darwinian controversies James R. Moore has
    drawn attention to the frequency with which evolution precipitated spiritual crises in
    the lives of those forced to contend with it. In partial confirmation of his thesis,
    Moore cites the alleged experiences of two Americans, James Dwight Dana and Jef-
    fries Wyman, whom earlier scholars had described, respectively, as experiencing “a
    long soul-searching struggle” over evolution and as suffering from “deep distress,
    emotional as well as rational,” over the prospect of apelike ancestors. Moore neglects,
    however, to mention that his authority for Dana pointedly stated that, despite his ex-
    pectations, he had found “no evidence” to support the supposition that “an inner con-
    flict involving his religious beliefs” lay behind Dana’s struggle. And a recent study of
    Wyman, based on new evidence, has concluded that Wyman experienced “very little

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