Talk:Charles Darwin's views on religion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hello Dave souza,
this edit does not make sense to me. Where does this "forcing new ideas" come from? Is this in the original conversation? If so, please cite directly. Furthermore, the word "admitted" in this context is not neutral.--Eloquence* 20:49, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
- The sentences you are finding difficult are now directly quoted from Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London: Michael Joseph, the Penguin Group, 1991). ISBN 0-7181-3430-3 pages 657-658, though I have considerably shortened their section on the episode. My reading is that they are paraphrasing Darwin, and "forcing new ideas" is their paraphrase of his statement about what the atheists want to do. The "admitted" comes in the context of a sentence about Darwin being able to agree with them about Christianity, and in my shorter version "agreed" does make it clearer. The sources they draw on appear to be Recollections of Francis Darwin, Cambridge University library pp 9-14 and Aveling, Religious Views pp 4-6, which I don't have to hand. His preference is for the word agnostic, but I feel that heading the section "Preference for agnosticism" is misleading. - - dave souza 23:35, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
-
- This "forcing ideas" part is not acceptable in this form. You are quoting someone else's paraphrasing without direct attribution, thereby letting Wikipedia paraphrase what Darwin said or thought. That is neither neutral nor encyclopedic. It's fine to quote from Desmond and Moore, but we shouldn't make their conclusions our own. Instead, we should report what Darwin actually said, as close to the primary source as possible.
-
- A statement to the effect that atheists "force" ideas on other people would be seen quite problematic by many, and if we attribute that opinion to Darwin, we should be quite clear about what he said where and when, rather than being content with quoting other people's summaries and interpretations.--Eloquence* 01:04, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
-
-
- I'll go along with that, though Darwin stating that he is against "forcing" atheism on anyone being "problematic" for many seems odd, when less than a decade earlier he was trying to stop the vicar from forcing Anglican doctrine on all the village schoolchildren...dave souza 08:41, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
- As I said, I don't mind a full discussion of Darwin's views -- I would like to know what he really said, and in which context. Was anyone he talked to trying to "force" atheism upon anyone in the same way Anglican doctrine was forced on schoolchildren? To me, the phrase sounds a bit anachronistic, but I may be wrong.--Eloquence* 23:07, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
-
-
"His work was pivotal in the development of evolution theory which some argue helps show that God is unnecessary, while others feel that attacking Darwin and restricting teaching of evolution helps to evangelise their faith." The second part of this sentence is completely unnecessary. The statement that some (presumably you meant Christians) "attack Darwin" and "restrict teaching" to advance their religion reveals bias and makes Christians sound very closed-minded and fundamentalist. Whether or not creationists/Christians ARE closed-minded and fundamentalist is a different discussion. This comment contributes nothing to the discussion of Darwin's personal religious views. I vote that the sentence should be shortened to, "His work was pivotal in the development of evolution theory."
[edit] Agnostic
As it happens, I was reading T.H.Huxley today, and it seems he invented the term agnostic - which may quite possibly have something to do with Darwin's choice of term. This might be OR, though. Adam Cuerden talk 06:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)