Richard Dawkins may be the most influential Darwinian writer in the current “Science and Religion Debate”, and recently he exposes an aggressive atheistic position toward all the religion. Many regard Dawkins’ posits the authentic descriptions on the relationship between Darwinism and religion. This is far from the truth, and this paper addresses a question to the conventional descriptions on the relationship between Darwinism and religion. Adopting a balanced perspective on the subject, this paper examines some early Darwinians’ attitude toward religion. Early Darwinians as well as Darwin himself rarely repudiated religious sentiment or religious practice. Even allegedly the most ferocious fighter against Christianity, Thomas Huxley accepted the religious authorities and Holy Bible for the education of working class.
The main part of this paper examines Charles Darwin’s view on religion and the rhetorics of writing for persuasion, through the analysis of The Origin of Species and Autobiography. Darwin was successful in his efforts to establish himself as a scientist and maker of new paradigm for biology. Contrasting to Philip Gosse’s failure, who wrote Omphalos to reconcile the geological texts with biblical chronology, Darwin’s success largely resulted from the fact that he carefully avoided religious concerns.
In conclusion Darwin was not an atheist. He was rather an agnostic as Thomas Huxley was. Moreover, I suggest that Julian Huxley’s optimistic evolutionary humanism is more legitimate inheritor of Darwinism than Dawkins’ jingoistic atheism.