Darwin letter reveals, "I do not believe in the Bible"

[rug]

A letter penned by Charles Darwin on his religious views that will be auctioned Monday at Bonhams in New York/ Bonhams

By/ Michael Casey/ CBS News/ September 21, 2015, 11:52 AM

While many scholars believe Charles Darwin was an agnostic or even an atheist, it can be difficult to find hard evidence to back up those beliefs. He was reluctant to discuss religion and his writings are often silent on the issue.

But now a simple one-sentence handwritten letter signed by the naturalist offers proof he did not believe in God. The letter, written 21 years after the publication of "The Origin of Species," will be auctioned off Monday afternoon at Bonhams in New York. It is expected fetch between $70,000 and $90,000.

Darwin's letter is a reply to a young barrister named Francis McDermott, who wrote on November 23, 1880 with a very unusual request: "...If I am to have pleasure in reading your books I must feel that at the end I shall not have lost my faith in the New Testament. My reason in writing to you therefore is to ask you to give me a Yes or No to the question Do you believe in the New Testament." McDermott continues by promising not to publicize Darwin's reply in the "theological papers."

The next day Darwin responded. He wasn't brusque but he was to the point and left no doubt about his beliefs, stating: "Dear Sir, I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God. Yours faithfully."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/darwin-letter-i-do-not-believe-in-the-bible/


It went for $197,000.

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22964/?category=results#/aa0=1&w0=results&m0=0

[Cartoonist]

1. Still not clear

It is possible to believe in a God but reject the Bible as nothing more than a misogynist rant by old men.

I was reading something recently that hinted that he believed in a creator, just not the one in the Bible.

[rug]

2. That's true. Jefferson's position is still an enigma.

[roguevalley]

3. I agree. I feel the same thing you said, Cartoonist. God is independent of the Bible for me.

Other things Darwin believed:

There is something, for us, chilling in Darwin's meditations on the contrast between those 'Eastern barbarians' who overran the Roman Empire and the 'savages' who wasted away at the prospect of British colonization. He cheerfully of the 'inferior vitality of the mulattoes'. Savages have 'low vitality', insufficient powers of reasoning to recognize many virtues, and weak power of 'self command'. Darwin accepts Mathus's view that barbarous races reproduced at a lower rate than civilized ones and he appears (he who so abominated the cruelty of Brazilian slave owners in The Voyager of a Naturalist) to believe that acts of genocide, if perpetuated by the British, were somehow part of the Natural Process: (Direct quote): "When Tasmania was first colonized the natives were roughly estimated by some to be at 7,000 and by others at 20,000. The numbers were soon greatly reduced chiefly by fighting with the English and with each other*. After the famous hunt by all the colonists, when the remaining natives delivered themselves up to the government, they consisted of 127 individuals who were in 1832 transported to Flinders Island. The grade of civilization seems to be a most important element in the success of competing nations." -The Victorians, A. N. Wilson

This is what really happened to the Tasmanian people which Darwin didn't have a single problem with:



The Tasmanian genocide

The Tasmanian genocide (fl. 1826-1829) is where white British settlers wiped out nearly all the native people of Tasmania (then called Van Diemen’s Land) and then sent the few hundred still alive to prison camps where they died of disease and despair. Truganini (pictured), the last full-blooded Tasmanian, died in 1876.

(They would go on hunting parties to kill them.)

There were 6,000 Tasmanians. They had lived in Tasmania for 30,000 years. They were hunter-gatherers, each band with its own lands which it hunted and maintained with controlled burnings.

In 1803 white British settlers began to arrive. Native Tasmanians were, at least on paper, British subjects with the full and equal protection of the law. In practice, though, even when the government knew of “murders and abominable cruelties” committed by whites against Tasmanians it did nothing. Despite killings, there was an uneasy peace of sorts. Whites lived along the coast. Most of the good hunting lands were still under Tasmanian control.

Then in 1817 whites discovered that Tasmanian lands were great for raising sheep. From 1819 to 1824 the British government took, without treaty or payment, huge amounts of Tasmanian land. From about 1823 Tasmanians grew increasingly violent. In 1826 Governor George Arthur declared them “open enemies” beyond the protection of the law. It was now open season on killing Tasmanians, what some call the War of Extermination.

Reasons whites killed Tasmanians:

to get revenge for past killings (1 white = 70 Tasmanians);
to protect “their” land and their sheep;
to take Tasmanian women and girls for forced labour and sex;
for sport;
just because.

As one newspaper put it, they were “shot like so many crows”.

By 1829, with only a few hundred Tasmanians left, the governor suffered a sudden a fit of conscience. He changed to a policy of “conciliation and protection” – meaning capture and imprisonment.

The government rounded up the remaining Tasmanians and sent them to prison camps, which featured:

vermin,
high-salt diets,
poor water supply,
separation of children from parents,
re-education in Christian civilization,
white respiratory diseases.

At one camp two-thirds were dead within the year. At another camp whites urinated on them

Just so you know, I don't really give a rat's ass about what Darwin thinks about the Bible. Not believing in it did nothing to elevate him.