Charles Darwin-Faith vs. Reason

A Courageous Voyage to Truth
JOHN CLARKE

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.
I only came to know this because of the various television specials. I watched with more than a passing interest because my deceased father's name was Darwin Kimbal Clarke and I being the second born son was christened John Darwin Clarke.

Growing up, I often heard my father say that his name gave him pause and reflection upon evolution, although I never heard him expand on it much more than that.

My father, while bright and having been offered entry into Officers Candidate School during service, never graduated from high school. He was a very different man from my grandfather, who was both well schooled and well read.

I recall as a young child that my grandfather foresaw the rise of China into global prominence when President Nixon was busying himself with opening up trade.

My mother, being rightly justified in her concern over my own faith, gave me a copy of my grandfather's Bible. There were also some old letters he had written to his eldest daughter back in the mid-fifties concerning his faith. I believe mother's intention was to help increase in me a sense of faith.

But the general tone of those letters expressed a deep reflection and examination of his faith. In reading them, I could not gather a clear understanding of what conclusions he had made. They read like a man still struggling with what most intelligent men wrestle with, and that is reconciling their faith with reason.

Papa, as we called him, must have been in his 50s when writing the letters. I would have thought that by then he would have come to at least some uneasy peace with his faith. I think that perhaps it was his Masonic teaching that colored his perspective. I say this because he did not refer to his deity as anything other than "The Creator."

I found this odd coming from a man who some 20 years earlier named his only son after Charles Darwin. But most of us are studies in contradictions and I guess Papa was no exception.

I have only read excerpts from Darwin's monumental work The Origin of the Species. After his infamous trip aboard "The Beagle", he spent many years studying the specimens he had collected from far-flung places before he came to his conclusion.

His conclusion was drawn from a multitude of plants and animals, as well as geologic records. Darwin was not the first to put forth this idea, and he had witnessed the fates of those lesser individuals with their less-prepared studies.

The world was a very different place in Darwin's day and there could be any number of retributions visited upon him from the monarchy, the church or society. He waited over 20 years, until he was in his 50s, before releasing his work. There quickly came a hailstorm of criticism that continues even today. Some ideas are more powerful than bombs.

I received a fair amount of ribbing from my childhood classmates about my name, and have always held some resentment against it.

In his private notes, Darwin revealed himself as a passionate man and a lover of all nature. He exhibits a polished writing style in his book, but in his private thoughts on nature he becomes almost poetic.

In the end, I believe that he came to realize that his work indeed belonged to the world. He went in wide-eyed knowing that it fell to him to suffer in order to reveal what he believed, and I believe, to be the truth. It is for that selfless, courageous act that I will now proudly embrace my namesake: Darwin.