Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Antiscience
ideas; but it has little bearing on the truth of his propositions. For
them to be generally accepted, they must convince atheists and
theists alike. This is just what happened.
Appleby and her colleagues claim that 'When Darwin formulated
his theory of evolution, he was an atheist and a materialist,'
and suggest that evolution was a product of a purported atheist
agenda. They have hopelessly confused cause and effect. Darwin
was about to become a minister of the Church of England when
the opportunity to sail on HMS Beagle presented itself. His
religious ideas, as he himself described them, were at the time
highly conventional. He found every one of the Anglican Articles
of Faith entirely believable. Through his interrogation of Nature,
through science, it slowly dawned on him that at least some of his
religion was false. That's why he changed his religious views.
Appleby and her colleagues are appalled at Darwin's description
of 'the low morality of savages . . . their insufficient powers
of reasoning . . . [their] weak power of self-command', and state
that 'now many people are shocked by his racism'. But there was
no racism at all, as far as I can tell, in Darwin's comment. He was
alluding to the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, suffering from
grinding scarcity in the most barren and Antarctic province of
Argentina. When he described a South American woman of
African origin who threw herself to her death rather than submit
to slavery, he noted that it was only prejudice that kept us from
seeing her defiance in the same heroic light as we would a similar
act by the proud matron of a noble Roman family. He was himself
almost thrown off the Beagle by Captain FitzRoy for his militant
opposition to the Captain's racism. Darwin was head and shoulders
above most of his contemporaries in this regard.
But again, even if he was not, how does it affect the truth or
falsity of natural selection? Thomas Jefferson and George
Washington owned slaves; Albert Einstein and Mohandas
Gandhi were imperfect husbands and fathers. The list goes on
indefinitely. We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it
fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future? Some
of the habits of our age will doubtless be considered barbaric by
later generations - perhaps for insisting that small children and
even infants sleep alone instead of with their parents; or
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