Charles Darwin
The young Charles Darwin (1809–82) studied Paley’s work at Cambridge when undertaking study for ordination in the Church of England. He found Paley’s argument convincing. It would seem that, like much of nineteenth-century British society, it was the chief foundation on which he rested his belief in God and in the truth of Christianity.
For Darwin himself and for countless others to follow, to find a mechanism by which nature could come to be organized to the benefit of living organisms was a deadly threat to his Christianity. That mechanism is precisely what Darwin is so famous for discovering.
If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.20
Darwin speculated that the reason living organisms seem to be so superbly adapted to their natural environments, all the parts working together so well, was not because this was the immediate work of a Designer. On the contrary, there was a natural explanation: it was a result of natural selection. Paley’s challenge had been met.
This, to Darwin, was the end of his belief in a creator God. “The old argument from 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.”21 Darwin had believed in God, not as the first cause who worked through many ingenious secondary causes, but as the conclusion of an argument based on what was observed in nature. Having set up God in his mind as an explanatory theory, the discovery of what he saw as an alternative explanation crushed the only role he had for God.
It was a source of great personal sadness for Charles Darwin. On the other hand, men like Thomas Henry Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”) hailed it as a triumph because they wished to see God deleted from the scene anyway. Eager to use any means at hand to fight his political battles on behalf of naturalism, Huxley was delighted with Darwin’s theory, even though he was not at all convinced that it was true. The theory had something far more important going for it than scientific truth; it provided him with a non-theistic account of nature.
Thomas Huxley
Huxley (1825–95) was a scientist with a passionate devotion to science as a philosophy. He had a vision for English society: to see men of science recognized as the true intellectual leaders of society and scientific education improved to the point where science could take pride of place as a profession. This meant more than just improving the career-paths of professional scientists. Huxley wanted naturalistic philosophy to take the place of Christianity as the ruling philosophy of society. He wanted scientific thinking and scientific leaders to replace religious thinking and religious leaders, who were simply in the way in society.22
To understand Huxley’s aims, we must recognize certain characteristics of English society at the time. While a lot of scientific study was being done, it was not a professional career as it is now. To a large extent, science was done by wealthy gentlemen who could afford to fund their own research. To become a member of the Royal Society, social class was more important than technical expertise or published research. Many members of the Royal Society no doubt regarded it as a hobby, an interesting pursuit in one’s spare time.23
Nor was there any such thing as a degree in science as we would think of it now. University education was largely based on the classics with any scientific classes being elective extras. In general, university education was dominated by the Church of England, and a great many of those who actually engaged in the practice of science, especially botany and geology, were clergy. Class, and the spare time and wealth it brought, were far more important in pursuing science than actual education.
Charles Darwin had originally seen his life developing along these lines. Before he went on his famous voyage on the Beagle, he had intended to become a country clergyman, filling his hours mostly with observation of nature and careful recording of his findings. It was a common and respectable pursuit for a gentleman. Likewise, when Darwin finally published his theory, the public looked to church leaders to comment on its scientific quality. Church leaders were the kind of well-read, intellectual thinkers who would be naturally expected to give an expert opinion on the matter.
Thomas Huxley, however, thoroughly disliked this organization of society. He was personally against the Church of England, in fact against religion in general. In particular, he hated the idea that religious leaders were regarded as having the right to comment on intellectual issues. As someone who had to earn his own living, he also resented the fact that science was not a paying pursuit. He wrote to his fiancée in 1851,
To attempt to live by any scientific pursuit is a farce. . . . A man of science may earn great distinction, but not bread. He will get enough invitations to all sorts of dinners and conversations, but not enough income to pay a cab.24
Huxley did not want science dominated by the landed gentry. He wanted it to be led by men such as himself: professional men, particularly non-theists, devoted to science as a living.
Huxley was ambitious and energetic, an excellent organizer and public speaker. He and a group of allies set about changing British society by taking control of the scientific institutions and seeking to change the way both scientific education and scientific influence were organized. He aimed for an incredible achievement, and it is even more incredible that to a great extent he succeeded.
Through sheer force of perseverance, as well as considerable expertise in behind-the-scenes political engineering, Huxley and his small group of scientific friends managed to take over control of science in England. Calling themselves the “X-club,” Huxley and eight other men would meet for dinner just before the meetings of the Royal Society. They would discuss suitable candidates for positions of influence in various scientific bodies and how to have them appointed or elected. From 1873 to 1885, every president of the Royal Society was a member of the X-club, so their discussions were extraordinarily fruitful. All over Britain, prominent scientific societies came to be dominated by X-club members or their friends.25
At the same time, Huxley was becoming more and more famous as a public commentator on science. This was another part of the battle. Huxley wanted not just for professional and atheistic men of science like himself to be in charge of scientific institutions; he wanted them to be recognized publicly as the dominant intellectuals of society. In his view, naturalism must take over the role of Christianity as the dominant philosophy. This was more than a battle of political influence; it was a battle over what was to be the public definition of truth. Huxley wanted naturalism to be the default position of public discourse. He did not want theologians to have a right to give public opinions; that right was to be restricted to scientific thinkers, and without theism having any part in it. In a lecture in 1866, he outlined what he thought would be the future of science and scientific thinking:
If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, to be more and more firmly established as the world grows older; if that spirit be fated, as I believe it is, to extend itself into all departments of human thought, and to become co-extensive with the range of knowledge; if, as our race approaches its maturity, it discovers, as I believe it will, that there is but one kind of knowledge and but one method of acquiring it; then we, who are still children, may justly feel it our highest duty to recognize the advisableness of improving natural knowledge, and so to aid ourselves and our successors in our course toward the noble goal which lies before mankind.26
Religion, if not to be abolished altogether, was to be made a private matter of emotion and values—not something that deserved any place in serious intellectual discussion. Instead, all the deference and respect previously given to religion in society was to come to science, to the “church scientific” (as Huxley called it); himself the bishop who gave “lay sermons” in the form of scientific lectures. Huxley even wrote to one friend in 1871 that he was giving lectures in biology to schoolmasters “with a view of converting them into scientific missionaries to convert the Christian Heathen of these islands to the true faith.”27
In other words, Huxley wanted far more than respect for science as a profession. This was part of the battle, of course. Huxley and his friends constantly publicized the successes of science, and the improvements in industry that resulted. Such successes were very well-received in the atmosphere of progress that dominated the nineteenth century. Yet more than that, Huxley managed to have this success attributed to the naturalistic philosophy in general. It was not a fair attribution. By far the majority of those actually working in science and industry would probably have thought of themselves as Christian and would have been appalled at the thought of atheism. That was irrelevant. Huxley, in the way he presented the successes of science, consistently allied them with a naturalistic worldview, giving the impression that it was only a non-theistic philosophy that could guarantee social progress.
Indeed, one of Huxley’s favorite techniques was to set science and theology up as rivals, with science as the inevitable victor. Time after time he would portray science in mythical terms as the hero, striving forward against adversity and ultimately victorious, while religion was the villain, trying to stop progress but unable to do so.
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.28
Huxley was a very capable speaker and popular writer. His point of view was persuasively put, and generally successful in swaying public opinion. Moreover, he was indefatigable. His output was prodigious. Through sheer force of repetition, constant publicity, and forceful presentation, Huxley managed to take society with him. People began to believe his message that science was necessarily anti-religious and was better than religion. Due to the efforts of popularists like Huxley, people began to believe that Darwin had, indeed, provided the means to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist.29