Why do champions of evolution like Richard Dawkins and others hold so firmly to the idea that God couldn’t possibly have created life? It all goes back to Charles Darwin. It's widely believed that through his discovery of evolution by natural selection, Darwin demonstrated the truth of naturalism. Naturalism is the philosophy that says that everything has a natural explanation---no supernatural explanations are necessary or permitted. Darwin is also widely believed to have lost his own Christian faith on account of evolution.

Many contemporary atheists proclaim themselves followers of Darwin in this sense. Author and Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer writes that he abandoned Christianity when he learned about evolution. Shermer writes that finally he could see how there could be design--or the appearance of design--without a designer. Consequently Shermer became a naturalist, rejecting all supernatural explanations. Following the same path, biologist Richard Dawkins writes that it was Darwin who finally made it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist."

In reality Darwin’s theory in no way demonstrated the validity of naturalism. Nor did his atheism have much to do with his scientific discoveries. First of all Darwin was never a very devout Christian. He was raised as a nominal Anglican. It says something about Anglicanism in Britain that a lukewarm Christian like Darwin actually considered becoming a clergyman. Darwin turned against Christianity, however, for two reasons.

First, we learn from Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s book on Darwin that several of his children either died or has had chronic illnesses. This was probably hereditary, as Darwin himself suffered for most of his life from one ailment or the other. When Darwin's daughter Annie died at a young age, however, Darwin was inconsolable. Usually a man of the stiff upper lip, Darwin could not stop himself from weeping even in public. Darwin blamed God for Annie's untimely death. This was in 1851, several years before Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859.

After Annie's death, Darwin began to reflect morbidly on mortality, and during his process he recalled that his own famous grandfather Erasmus Darwin, as well as several other family members and friends, were unbelievers. Since Darwin saw them as good and respectable people, he angrily fulminated against the doctrine of eternal damnation, asking what kind of a God would consign good people to hell just because they refused to accept Christianity? The thought of all these people in hell filled Darwin with such revulsion that he completely jettisoned Christianity.

At the same time Darwin recognized that his theory of evolution was quite compatible with Christianity. When the American biologist Asa Gray wrote Darwin to say that his theory of evolution demonstrated how God created species, Darwin congratulated Gray for being the first one to see the point. Gray later wrote an essay “Natural Selection Not Inconsistent With Natural Theology” which Darwin praised and distributed in England. In London, the preacher-poet Charles Kingsley argued for the compatibility with evolution and Christianity, and Darwin encouraged his efforts.

Over the years, however, Darwin’s personal embitterment with God hardened and this influenced his attitude toward evolution. Gradually Darwin became obstinately resistant to any suggestion that supernatural intervention could be involved, even at the outset. Without a shred of evidence, Darwin speculated that life may have originated in a “warm little pond,” a prospect that scientists today dismiss as implausible in the extreme. When Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution, proposed to Darwin that natural selection could not account for human rationality or morality, Darwin insisted that it must, and that on no account would he permit a divine foot in the door.

In truth evolution says nothing about who or what created the universe. Evolution doesn't even say anything about how life got started. Evolution merely describes how one life form gave rise to another. Yet Darwin’s personal hostility to God somehow inaugurated a new fanaticism among his disciples. Today writers like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett argue that evolution is a kind of master key that unlocks the universe. These writers illegitimately invoke the scientific theory of evolution to prove the metaphysical doctrine of naturalism. We are still living with the tragic consequences of Darwin’s atheist moment.