An Interview
with Charles Darwin (2015) by Peter
J. Bowler
The author asked a
theoretical question: “What if you could
sit down with one of the greatest scientific minds of all time – Charles
Darwin?” This fictionalized interview, based on Darwin’s own writings and
historical facts gives readers like me (with little knowledge but interested to
know) a glimpse of how Darwin would have answered the questions people have for
him today. From this book, I learned Darwin’s views on education, science,
religion and more.
“Charles Darwin is one of the most controversial scientists of all time,”
introduce the author. “He proposed an
interlocking set of new approaches to the study of how the world we live in has
come to assume its present form.” Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, persuaded (most) scientists that they had
to take seriously the claim that “all
living things have evolved by natural causes from previously existing types.”
And he argued that: “there is no
preconceived direction of development built into the history of life, and to
drive home the point he proposed the mechanism of natural selection, in which
populations change according to trial and error… Life is a never-ending process
of struggle in which only those best fitted to the local conditions survived
and breed.”
Many people found the
above suggestions (and some other of Darwinian theories) hard to accept during
his time and many still reject them today. The theory conflicts with the Book
of Genesis story of creation and the idea that God or Creator created all things
perfect at first. If humans are just animals albeit highly intelligent and
highly social ones, the critics say, “there
seems to be no room here for the immortal soul or transcendent moral values.”
And to add more pain to the religious on his time, Darwin suggests that “there is no purpose in the universe.”
Darwin makes these conclusions – and came out with the theory of evolution –
during his exploratory trip on the HMS Beagle ship around the world: “It was in the Galapagos Islands that Darwin
saw the clearest example of this process.”
[Let’s end with the topic
of his faith]. Darwin loss his Christian faith first because of so many
‘evidences’ of evolution he found during his time of studies and explorations.
And there are few other reasons. “There
were [also] personal tragedies that made it difficult for me to carry on
believing in a caring God. My favourite daughter, Annie, died horribly at the
age of ten… How could a caring God design a world in which the innocent suffers
and are snuffed out in that way?” Another reason was that he couldn’t
imagine that his late atheist (maybe agnostic) dead brother and father “were damned as far as the most committed
Christians are concerned because they don’t accept that Jesus Christ is the
saviour.” He continues: “Just because
they thought for themselves and decided that the evidence didn’t support the
Christian view of God, they are dammed… I can’t believe in a God who requires
such a rigid belief in the significance of a single historical event.”
Enough with his believes
in God (or the absent of it), this book is interesting, easy-to-understand, and
filled with pictures and graphics to help readers to understand more of
Darwin’s dangerous ideas. You’ll know important events – not much but sufficient
- that causes Darwin to be known as he is today. “If we were visited by superior creatures from another star system… what
would they make of the legacy of Darwin as opposed to, say, Marx or Einstein?”
Richard Dawkins asks theoretical questions in his foreword of this book, “Would our guests revere another Darwin as
one of their greatest thinkers of all time?” With a last sip from my
Starbuck coffee, I end this review.
THINK BIG. START
SMALL. GO DEEP.
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