Are these Quotes from Charles Darwin true?

Question

A friend of mine told me about this.
This was from a visit from Lady Hope a few months before he died...their conversation...
"What are you reading now?" I asked as I seated myself beside his bedside. "Hebrews!" he answered - "still Hebrews. 'The Royal Book' I call it. Isn't it grand?"

Then, placing his finger on certain passages, he commented on them.

I made some allusions to the strong opinions expressed by many persons on the history of the Creation, its grandeur, and then their treatment of the earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis.

He seemed greatly distressed, his fingers twitched nervously, and a look of agony came over his face as he said: "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment, the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them."


what do you think or know about this?

this was the first I ever heard of it..
Zero has a link which states his family says it's a lie. first for me.

Davy Jones ...take your hate and bashing somewere else, I only ask a question.
how else do you learn thing?

Answer 1

Darwin is somewhat misunderstood in folklore. He was uncomfortable with his role in science taking a position against creationism. In fact, in the book that most people credit him with claiming we descended from apes, he never made that conclusion. What he did say was that Earth's history was replete with both extinctions and creations at a species level - thereby creating evolution. It wasn't until years later, after others had drawn a correlation between man and ape that in a later book, he made that representation.

Incidentally, despite chimpanzees being the closest relative of man (from a genetic mapping standpoint), scientists have never 'proven' that man evolved from ape, it is just their best working theory (a theory which itself evolves often when new evidence is discovered that contradicts what was previously accepted as scientific fact).


Edit to: anotherguy below -

I agree that science can rarely prove anything but my statement is not meaningless. There are far too many people in life that take the findings of science and accept them as fact w/o question and it is to those people that my comment was directed.

Too many people just accept the latest and greatest information presented as absolute fact. Think of where we would be if scientists and others weren't constantly challenging prevailing positions. If we accepted that he world was flat (I know, a very basic reference but used to illustrate) and so on. I just wanted to make sure that when evaluating the body of evidence, that they are truly objective.

I am not taking a position on this matter either way and as such am trying to be as objective in my response as possible. I do my best to avoid speaking in absolutes, such as "the fact that we evolved from lower creatures has never been in doubt." Scientific evidence does suggest our evolution from lower creatures but it also suggest various other things which can't be proven or explained.

Is there some common ground between what some perceive as the symbolism (again as opposed to a literal interpretation) of the Old Testament and story of life on this planet? Who knows? But it seems to me that they do not have to be mutually exclusive ideas (although most treat them that way).

Answer 2

It always amazes me how much christians need to repeat this lie. Now, either you realize it's a lie, and you repeat it all the same, or you just decided to accept it without question, just like you did with the bible.


Claim CG001:
Darwin renounced evolution on his deathbed.
Source:
Enoch, H., 1916. Darwin's final recantation. Bombay Guardian, 25 March 1916, quoted at http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0724_Darwins_Final_Recant.html
Response:

1. The story of Darwin's recanting is not true. Shortly after Darwin's death, Lady Hope told a gathering that she had visited Darwin on his deathbed and that he had expressed regret over evolution and had accepted Christ. However, Darwin's daughter Henrietta, who was with him during his last days, said Lady Hope never visited during any of Darwin's illnesses, that Darwin probably never saw her at any time, and that he never recanted any of his scientific views (Clark 1984, 199; Yates 1994).

2. The story would be irrelevant even if true. The theory of evolution rests upon reams of evidence from many different sources, not upon the authority of any person or persons.

Links:
Greig, Russell, 1996. Did Darwin recant? Creation 18(1): 36-37. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1315.asp

Yates, Simon, 1994. The Lady Hope story: A widespread falsehood. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hope.html
References:

1. Clark, Ronald W., 1984. The Survival of Charles Darwin: A biography of a man and an idea. New York: Random House.
2. Yates, Simon, 1994. (see above)

Further Reading:
Clark, Ronald W., 1984. The Survival of Charles Darwin: A biography of a man and an idea. New York: Random House.

Answer 3

What does it matter? Science is not about "he said, she said." Science is about empirical evidence. Like it or not, the empirical evidence strongly leads to the conclusion that we came from lower creatures, through descent and modification. Deal with it. Personal attacks on the deceased will not change that one bit.

I also fail to see how evolution in any way makes any implication about the existence or non-existence of God. It may conflict with a narrow-minded version of what some people think that God should be like, or how He should have created us. The fact is, however, there are many devout Christians who are biologists, and believe in evolution. Some of them even defend evolution, while also defending their faith from atheists. Sorry to burst your bubble creationists, but you're setting up a false choice.

Edit: to Jdoe55 above. Science can never literally "prove" anything, so your statement that evolution hasn't been proven is meaningless. (If you don't know what I mean by that, you have no clue) And yes, theories are sometimes modified as new information comes in, but the fact that we evolved from lower creatures has never been in doubt.

Answer 4

There are some objections to evolution that are simply false.

And there are others that are simply irrelevant.

The Lady Hope story is a particularly impressive display of Creationist dishonesty and stupidity because it is both false and irrelevant at the same time!

There is NO corroborating evidence of Lady Hope's story. Darwin's wife Emma and daughter Henrietta both denied that she was present at Darwin's deathbed. It was a story invented by a truly small-minded person trying to impress fellow evangelists with her miracle conversion of a famous man. And there is nothing, NOTHING, in Darwin's writings that indicates anything but growing confidence in his own theories right up to the day he died.

But even if this ridiculous story were true, it has absolutely no relevance at all to the overwhelming acceptance of Darwin's theory by the consensus of the scientific community. There are no "take backs" in science. You can't "recant" a theory and make it go away. This is what reveals that Creationist thinking is *so* tied to argument by authority, that they see Darwin as the authority they must attack. They actually believe that evolution lives or dies on the reputation of one man or one book, as if Darwin's book cast a mysterious spell over tens of thousands of scientists for over 150 years ... instead of, just *maybe*, the fact that scientists live, eat and breathe EVIDENCE.

Even answersingenesis.com urges fellow creationists to dump the bogus Lady Hope story, as it is an embarassment to their cause, and is most assuredly false:

"Did Darwin Recant?" (from answersingenesis.com):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/darwin_recant.asp

But the bottom line is this ... just how low and pathetic do you have to be to put words in the mouth of a dying man? At least with Galileo the church had the decency to bring him into a tribunal to force him to recant ... Darwin isn't even given the decency of being asked ... the religious persecutors just waited until he died, and then *fabricated* a recantation.

Answer 5

If Darwin did change his mind about the theory he proposed, that in no way would effect what we know about evolution today, his personal opinion didn't come up with the theory of evolution, but the facts that he discovered did and those of which we keep on discovering to this day.

Answer 6

See source.

It's an utter fabrication, but even if it wasn't it doesn't disprove evolution in the slightest (as some creationists claim). Science is based on facts and evidence. There is a very VERY extensive body of evidence that supports evolution, regardless of creationists' claims to the contrary. Even if Darwin had claimed that evolution was something he made up and doesn't exist, that doesn't refute all the evidence that has been accumulated to support evolution.

Answer 7

Nope, completely false! There are a lot of places to check it out, Snopes, talkorigins.com and the list goes on. Darwin saw what he saw, period. Evolution isn't questioned anywhere but in the minds of the Christian fundies, it is a fact for the rest of the world. There is no debate, there is no controversy. For most of the world, it isn't an issue.

Answer 8

first off, it's not true.

second, this just shows how dumb creationists are. They literally think that discrediting Charles Darwin somehow negates 150 years of research in many fields of science.

Our ideas have been shown to hold up separate of any people's opinions. Religion's haven't. Case closed.

Answer 9

Its a lie just as its a lie when people call it the theory of evolution iy is a proven fact. The truth is we know dinosaurs are no longer here and that many life forms have become extinct yet did you know dinosaurs have almost the same DNA as birds. Religion is for idiots they are hypocrites who use all the good things science has given yet when science shows then to be wrong they refuse to listen I call that a mind of a goose. Faith asks you not to think I believe a lack of thinking is what makes people retarded

Answer 10

lets hope so. he was no more than a man with a belief in what he thought i think more of my self as being a germ or a tadpole or a monkey I'm created by the KING of KINGS the one the only often imitated but never duplicated my GOD in heaven and my only salvation JESUS CHRIST