Hi Betty! You roped me in on this one, because I think you unfairly represent Darwin's point of view. Normally you and A-G are too philosophical for me to follow along and I just enjoy the ride.
Darwin was normally very private about his religious beliefs so his faith is easy to mis-understand, but in a letter to Mr. J. Fordyce in 1879, he revealed a sense of his state of mind:
"What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one but myself. But, as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates...In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."
I'm familiar with Dawkins, but not Dennett. Dawkins is openly hostile to religion and its not hard to find him repeating his hostility in his writing and in his public statements. I would not characterize Darwin's worst case agnosticism with Dawkin's outright hostility and atheism. Thanks for listening (reading?).
Thanks for raising this very fair point, <1/1,000,000th%. My concern, as a student of culture and history, really is less with what Darwin believed or what he thought about the significance of his theory, than with the usages to which he has been put by the Progressive Left.
Your characterization of Dawkins is certainly accurate. He is both an atheist and a socialist. But this complex is very common among our cultural and scientific elites these days. Scientists such as Dawkins and Dennett use their reputations as fine scientists in order to legitimate their prosecution of quite unrelated cultural initiatives -- such as this "Brights movement." I don't know any other way to understand this movement than as a concerted attempt to undermine traditional American (and British) institutions and culture, using the tactics of folks like Antonio Gramsci.... There is a great deal of hatred in our "Bright boys" for the specifically American type of sociopolitical order, and the conservative culture on which it is built. So they want to "change things." That way, the human race can "evolve" along into a "better" destiny, a "better" world.
They begin with an attack on religion and its symbols. But the attack is especially vicious on the great faiths -- Judaism and Christianity -- that posit the sanctity and inviolability of the individual human person under God. Note this characterization of man is inconvenient for the purposes of the types of projects the Progressive Left has in mind for us.