[Stultis]

I happen to be a non-religious agnostic, leaning pretty strongly towards philosophical theism. But I don't accept the anti-intellectual notion that one was to embrace some putatively correct ideology to understand the views of a thinker. You have to be willing to consider perspectives that may differ from your own with varying measures of sympathy or detatchment, but you don't have to be "programmed" (or deprogrammed).

If you are it can be a problem. In attempting to understand Darwin, you are clearly more sympathetic to Fiske's perspective on Darwin than you are to Darwin's own expressed views. This may lead to a deep and subtle understanding of Fiske, but it only obscures your grasp of Darwin's own thinking.

[Held_to_Ransom]

You didn't cite reading Fiske, but if you have, you haven't understood him, and certainly you show no evidence that you have read him. Neither have you read Darwin's last works, the ones he spent the last decades of his life working on, and the ones he was busy writing while others were organizing his old notes for edited hand picked trifles such as you prefer to consider most important to him.

[Held_to_Ransom]

You didn't cite reading Fiske, but if you have, you haven't understood him, and certainly you show no evidence that you have read him. Neither have you read Darwin's last works, the ones he spent the last decades of his life working on, and the ones he was busy writing while others were organizing his old notes for edited hand picked trifles such as you prefer to consider most important to him.

But, you have answered my question as to whether or not your faith was as strong as Darwin's. It is clearly not. You have time though to learn. Hopefully a great deal of it.