Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (32 page)

Ernestine Rose:
Rose (1810–1892) followed on Wright’s heels, using the same medium (public speaking) on the same topics (women’s rights and slavery) with the same primary target (religion) and the same result (outrage, name-calling, and threats of violence). She was elected president of the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1854, but not before several members tried to boot her from the platform because of her atheism. Susan B. Anthony, an agnostic herself, insisted that “every religion — or none — should have an equal right on the platform.” The following year, one newspaper said Rose, being “a female Atheist,” is “a thousand times below a prostitute.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
Stanton (1815–1902), an atheist, also supported abolition and women’s rights. Like Wright and Rose, she shocked many of those fighting with her when she insisted, loudly and often, that “the Bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of woman’s emancipation.” Stanton and Susan B. Anthony co-authored the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution — “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” — which became law 18 years after Stanton’s death.

Bracing for the Collision of Religion and Science

The long collision of religion and science that started in the 15th century picked up speed in the 19th century. No other century in human history contained quite so enormous a change in the way humans saw themselves. When the century opened its doors in 1801, there wasn’t much reason for anyone to doubt Archbishop James Ussher, who 200 years earlier had used the Bible’s chronology to put the creation of the world in mid-autumn of 4004 BCE. Certainly no theory in 1801 competed with the Genesis account of the special and separate creation of humankind.

How much older and wiser the world was less than a century later after a couple of new scientific discoveries humbled humanity and shook up humanity’s assumptions about God.

Aging the Earth: The second humbling

Copernicus first pulled the rug out from under the ego of humanity in the 15th century by yanking the Earth out of the center of the universe. So the Earth wasn’t at the universal belly button, but at least humanity still straddled the full span of time, right? Humanity was there at the beginning (okay, day six) and humanity is still here 6,000 years later, counting down to the Rapture. But a
second humbling
was soon to come as the age of the Earth multiplied nearly a thousand times over.

No sooner had the century begun than the birthday of the Earth started sliding backward in time, pushed by the new sciences of geology and paleontology. In the 1830s, the work of geologist Charles Lyell called Noah’s flood into question. The evidence after opening the Earth’s crust pointed to gradual change over vast amounts of time — not a sudden flood.

As the window of history expanded from 6,000 years to 96 million and beyond, new questions emerged about the age of humankind. Have humans been here all these millions of years — or is
humanity’s
birthday somewhere along the way?

Doing away with Noah’s flood wasn’t fatal to religious belief, of course. It was just one story among many, after all. A metaphor, one might say. Believers who accepted the new data maintained that God’s stage had simply expanded, making the story of creation all the grander for it. As the 20th century began, that stage grew to an estimated two billion years — well on the way to the current estimate of 4.54 billion.

By itself, the work of Lyell and other geologists of the 19th century didn’t directly challenge the importance of humans in the scheme of things. It did, however, provide a crucial ingredient — a vast landscape of time — for the next and biggest humbling.

Dethroning the human species: The third humbling

In the painful process of humbling humanity’s self-image, no shock was more jarring than the one Charles Darwin administered in 1859 by saying that all life on Earth is related by descent, including humans.

The idea itself wasn’t new with Darwin. As far back as the pre-Socratics in ancient Greece, people considered the possibility that all living things were related — not to mention anyone who ever looked a baboon in the face. Charles’s own grandfather Erasmus Darwin suggested that all warm-blooded animals may have descended from a single ancient organism. And 15 years before Charles Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species
was published, an anonymous book titled
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
appeared making the very same case — not thoroughly or well, but still the same basic claim.

So although evolution wasn’t a new concept in 1859, Darwin’s explanation of
natural selection
— the
way
evolution works — was new. The convincing and meticulous details in the
Origin
moved evolution from interesting notion to compelling scientific theory — at which point humanity’s self-image was in for a bruising.

The idea that you and I were specially created in the image of the Creator of the Universe and given dominion over the world and all that’s in it — that idea was now gone. After Darwin, you and I are trousered apes. Pretty impressive ones, but still, it’s a serious pay cut.

Some people greeted the news by trying to stretch traditional religion to accommodate the theory, saying God started things going, then used evolution to create the diversity of life. It’s a nice effort, but one that requires a major misunderstanding of natural selection. (Check out
Chapter 3
for a fuller explanation of natural selection and evolution.) Other people took the simplest route, declaring evolution to be untrue because it contradicted Scripture. Done and done.

Even the scientific community didn’t instantly embrace the idea by any means. Like all good theories, evolution withstood a withering crossfire of challenge in the following generations. For a while, it actually looked like the theory would fade away, partially or entirely. Not until the 1930s did advances in genetics boost evolution over the bar, solving the remaining problems and securing the solid consensus of biologists. Evolution had become a scientific fact as well established as the Earth’s orbit of the Sun — another one that was hard to believe at first, but is nonetheless true.

Nowhere did the crisis of faith play out more dramatically in the wake of Darwin’s theory than in his own time and place — England of the late 19th century Victorian era.

Doubting like a Victorian: The Crisis of Faith

Most people think of Victorian England as socially uptight and sexually repressed. And though the stories of covering piano legs (excuse me, piano
limbs)
in frilly trousers isn’t true, they did set a high water mark for both prudery and its eternal sidekick — kinky sexual experimentation.

But the era was much more complex and interesting than high collars, stuffy manners, and even hidden fetishes can capture alone. An incredible surge of scientific discovery and debate turned the world and humanity’s self-concept on its head — especially Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The result was something called the “Crisis of Faith,” a rapid spread of religious doubt in the late 19th century. As people learned and discussed the implications of new scientific discoveries, they threw the assumptions of Christianity into serious question throughout Europe. Genesis was the first to go, followed by pretty much everything else that had been held both true and unquestionable just a generation before.

The forceful challenge of religious ideas was suddenly in the open air. Philosophers, poets, artists, and scientists explored the idea of a world without God and nature without an inherent moral system. Some, like Thomas Huxley and the poet Algernon Swinburne, tucked in to this new world with giddy excitement. Others wrote dirges about the loss of faith, such as the poets Thomas Hardy and Matthew Arnold (see the earlier section, “
Killing God: Atheist Philosophers Do the Crime, a Pantheist Writes the Eulogy
.”)

Religion and science, which had a testy enough relationship going into the Victorian era, mostly owned up to irreconcilable differences by the end and parted ways. And for all the screaming and thrown dishes, religion and science both walked into the 20th century without a noticeable limp. That’s not to say they weren’t changed — science had a new vision and an enormous new set of questions, whereas Christianity (in Europe at least) was less about making claims based on a literal reading of its ancient books and more about using religious stories to motivate social justice and the alleviation of suffering in this world. Britain ended up with a generally wiser, less literal, more positive form of Christian belief than some other countries I could name.

No greater testimony to the civilized outcome of a tumultuous period existed than the burial of Charles Darwin, the man who midwifed so much of the controversy, in Westminster Abbey in 1882. Of course, the Reverend Frederick Farrar, Canon of Westminster, assured the mourners that Darwin’s theory was entirely compatible with belief in God. (I’ll have to agree to disagree on that, Reverend. Check out
Chapter 3
.)

Debating Darwin’s theory: Huxley-Wilberforce

Most people familiar with the current cultural debate over evolution may think Darwin would relish raising a hackle or three. But they don’t know Darwin. The man whose theory overturned the most cherished assumptions of the human race was actually a conflict-avoider of the first rank. He was painfully shy, for one thing, and conflict irritated the chronic health problems that plagued him all his life.

He was especially disinterested in religious arguments. He had been there and done that as a youth, and he just didn’t feel that they shed much light on the scientific questions that really interested him. He also had to consider his wife Emma’s Christian faith. The implications of her husband’s work pained her at times, and he in turn was pained by her pain. It was all just too much.

So after publishing
On the Origin of Species,
Charles retreated to his home to study orchids. The pitched debate was left to friends, such as biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who loved a good rumble as much as Darwin hated it. Huxley eventually came to be called “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his steadfast defense of the theory (and for his jowly face, I think, which you may now search for online).

Though Huxley spent the rest of his career promoting and explaining evolution, one event captured the whole fracas better than any other.

Just seven months had passed since
On the Origin of Species
turned the world inside out. Scientists and philosophers from across Britain had gathered at Oxford University to hear how the theory was setting Europe ablaze with debate and controversy. Both supporters and opponents of the theory of evolution were present, including

Thomas Henry Huxley:
He had been publishing articles and giving lectures in support of evolution steadily since the book was published the previous year.