Darwin's letter to Asa Gray

Here is a really interesting letter that Charles Darwin wrote to his friend Asa Gray. A couple interesting things to note, the first is that Darwin is not exactly an atheist. His position is that the whole issue is beyond comprehension, like a dog trying to understand the mind of Newton.

He is more of a confused theist and he is specifically confused by the existence of suffering in the world. If he does at times doubt the existence of God it is not a rational line of reasoning that has brought him to this conclusion, but it is an emotional response to suffering. Although he doesn't mention it here, a big turning point in his life was when his ten year old daughter died of Cholera. Again we find that atheism is more of an emotional response than a rational or scientific conclusion based on evidence.

My dear Gray,

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae (wasp) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force.

I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope and believe what he can.

Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws,—a child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by action of even more complex laws,—and I can see no reason, why a man, or other animal, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws; all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence. But the more I think the more bewildered I become; as indeed I have probably shown by this letter.

Yours sincerely and cordially,
Charles Darwin