It is unlikely that Charles Darwin gave up his belief in evolution when he was dying.
Did Charles Darwin reject evolution before he died?
Did Darwin really have a deathbed conversion?
Quick-read this article:
Many Christians think that Charles Darwin gave up believing his
theory of evolution and that he converted to Christianity before he
died. But thorough research has found no backing for this
claim.
It is unfortunate that many well-meaning Christians — including many preachers — promote the story that Charles Darwin withdrew his belief in evolution on his deathbed.
It would be a spectacular story for Christianity if it were true, but Christians should not bear false witness if it is not true.
Tracing the story
Many researchers have tried to trace this story back to its beginning. As far as we can tell, they have all concluded that the story about Darwin's deathbed rejection of evolution is not true.
Details of the tale vary, but the basic account, which first appeared in the Watchman-Examiner (Boston) of August 19, 1915, goes like this:
About seven months before Charles Darwin died in 1882, a woman known as “Lady Hope” supposedly visited him and found him reading the Bible's Book of Hebrews. When she mentioned the subject of creation as recorded in the Book of Genesis, he became agitated, but asked her to come back to speak about Jesus Christ to a group of servants, tenants and neighbors.
No recanting
Nowhere does this story say that Darwin expressed doubt about evolution. Nor does it say that he committed his life to Christ. It seems more likely that Darwin's thinking was “how can you believe the Bible if you can't prove it's true?”
In fact, from letters that Darwin wrote we find that when people asked him his beliefs about God, he generally refused to give a satisfactory answer. His son Francis always maintained that his father was an agnostic.
One of Darwin's biographers, James Moore, examined the “Darwin legend” for 20 years and wrote a book about it in 1994. (The Darwin Legend, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan.) Moore found some truth in the story, but many enrichments, which he called “holy fabrication.”
Yes, there was a “Lady Hope” — Lady
Elizabeth Hope (see photo at left), born Elizabeth Reid Cotton in
Tasmania, Australia, on Friday December 9, 1842. She was the
daughter of a British general, General Sir Arthur Cotton. She took
part in tent evangelism and visited sick people in Kent in the
1880s.
She married retired Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Hope in 1877, who was 34 years her senior, and gained the title of Lady Hope of Carriden. She died in Sydney, Australia, in March, 1922. Her gravestone still stands at Rookwood Cemetery in the Sydney suburb of Lidcombe.
Details of the story “embellished”
Moore believes that Lady Hope (who seems to have used the title Lady Hope rather than the more common protocol of Lady Elizabeth) probably did visit Darwin six or seven months before he died. But Moore found that many of the details in the embellished stories were clearly wrong.
Darwin's second daughter, Henrietta Litchfield, was quoted in The Christian of February 23, 1922, as saying that Lady Hope never visited her father during any of his illnesses. But many people could have visited Darwin whom his daughter did not know about, or had forgotten, so this is not conclusive evidence that Lady Hope did not visit Darwin.
After all, Henrietta made this claim almost 30 years after her father's death, she was now almost 80, and she and her husband Richard had not been living permanantly in the Darwin home at the time. Henrietta is also known for her “selective editing” when it came to the religious side of her own mother Emma (see Henrietta Litchfield's biography in The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science), so she certainly could have been the same when it came to incidents involving her father.
Above: Drawing of Charles Darwin's house in Downe, Kent, in 1882 — viewed from his garden. © Time Inc.
Lady Hope true; Darwin's conversion untrue
Darwin's family has always denied that Charles converted and renounced evolution, which fits with the known facts. But we should keep in mind that even if Darwin had renounced evolution, this would not prove or disprove evolution, any more than Christianity would be disproved if a famous Christian renounced it. Truth is not decided by a popularity vote.
As mentioned above, James Moore found what other researchers have found. The story of Darwin's conversion and renunciation of evolution is either an invention or unwarranted embroidery on the original story.
Postscript: Only 13 days after Henrietta Litchfield's public denunciation of the Lady Elizabeth Hope story appeared in The Christian, Lady Hope succumbed to terminal cancer and died on Wednesday March 8, 1922 in Sydney, Australia.
Some of the information in this article came from “Did Darwin recant?”, Creation magazine, December 1995–February 1996.
Related topics:
- Can a Christian be an evolutionist?
- If evolution is true, which ape turned into a human?
- How can you believe the Bible if you can't prove it's true?
- Arguments against atheistic evolution!
- What is the origin and meaning of the Christian fish symbol, the Darwin fish, and the dead Darwin fish?
- What was the star of Bethlehem that led the wise men to Christ?
- Why evolution breeds tyrants
- What good has Christianity done?
- How do people become Christians?
- Why can't atheists find God?
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