A theology of glory strikes again: in an interview on NPR, Randal Keynes, the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, talks about the events preceding the publication of On the Origin of Species (major ht JD).
You may have known this already, but Charles and Emma Darwin had a daughter named Annie who suffered from a terminal illness, likely tuberculosis. Darwin was extremely upset when she died. Emma Darwin was a devout Unitarian and believed her faith would allow her to see Annie in the afterlife. The author frames the story of the Origin of Species as a tale of one man’s breakdown from faith into rational skepticism, largely based on his own disappointment with God.
The new movie Creation is based on Keynes’s book/Darwin biography, Annie’s Box (now re-titled Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution.
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nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could…
I am always struck how the truth of an event is always much messier and more meaningful that the mythology that has been built around it, whether in our own lives or the lives of (famous) others.