[betty boop]

It was not as if they merely were asked to accept that life had evolved--many theologians had long taken that for granted. What the Darwinians demanded was that religionists agree to the untrue and unscientific claim that Darwin had proved that God played no role in the process.

VR, you wrote: "Darwin spent no time advocating atheism." Even if he had wanted to (which is dubious), he didn't have to: He had Thomas Huxley -- a thorough-going atheist who was first among his popularizers -- to do that for him. Huxley obviously had an ax to grind against "Rome" (we can come to this reasonable conclusion on the basis of his own statements) and it seems that his critique of Darwin was largely a polemical appeal to the masses, for the purpose of freeing them of the backward superstitions and putative persecutions of religious fanatics who stand athwart science yelling STOP! because (supposedly) the theory of evolution is a threat to Genesis....

A thoughtful Christian is unlikely to see evolution as a threat to Genesis. Certainly I don't.

Nonetheless, Huxley gins up his straw man. I gather he conceived of his project as human liberation of some sort ... once God's out of the way, you see, man is completely free to do whatever he likes -- to make a better, more perfect world, for instance; or simply to indulge his own viciousness, "guilt-free," should he prefer that. In short, T. Huxley -- and later on, grandson J. Huxley -- was just another tom-tom beater for the "God is dead" movement, and his use (misuse? abuse?) of Darwin's "theory" well served his purpose.

The author of this fine article has not imputed motives to Darwin, and I won't do that either. I'm sure the Darwin thought he was doing science, and was in fact doing science. But he himself seems to have been aware of certain weaknesses in his theory.

Huxley, on the other hand, obviously did have a motive. That meretricious motive continues to inspire the likes of Richard Dawkins, who also seems to prefer dishonest polemics to good science.

[Tribune7]

once God's out of the way, you see, man is completely free to do whatever he likes -- to make a better, more perfect world, for instance; or simply to indulge his own viciousness, "guilt-free," should he prefer that.

I think you hit it on the head.

[unspun]

A thoughtful Christian is unlikely to see evolution as a threat to Genesis. Certainly I don't.

Right; yet it's when the "e" is capitalized that the trouble begins, so to speak....

[VadeRetro]

An argument from motive is a fallacy. While noting even the most transparently obvious motive may hint that the text is false, it does not guarantee such falsehood. The DNC may issue a press release tomorrow that pictures of Bush have surfaced dancing drunk and naked on a bar in 1976. Their motives would be obvious. The picture might nevertheless be real. You can't use the motive to "prove" that the picture is faked.

In the case of an argument from motive against a theory that has worked for 145 years and still works ... The motives of the maker of the argument are the real issue. If any thought processes are likely corrupt, THERE's where the cloud of suspicion must hover. Sorry, BB!

Darwin got the science right. It doesn't matter what Huxley or even Darwin thought of "Rome." That should be obvious by now. One has to studiously ignore or be genuinely ignorant of a whole lot of science to pretend otherwise.