Pollard on Film: Creation and changing your mind

Nick Pollard explores Charles Darwin’s changing belief in God, with clips from the film ‘Creation’.

Two crucial questions are posed – Why is it that you believe what you do? and What would it take to make you change your mind?

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Yvonne Venables

Is it true that when Darwin was close to death he admitted that evolution was a mistake, he turned back to God and was often found reading the scriptures? Does it include this in the film?
Tony Watkins

Hi Yvonne

Thanks for dropping by the site. No, I’m afraid there’s no evidence at all for this story – it seems to be a Christian urban myth. His letters show that he never gave up on the idea of creator as first cause for everything, but that he couldn’t reconcile this with the reality of suffering that he saw in the natural world. He says in one letter in 1879, ‘‘In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.’ He wrote to Joseph Hooker in 1870 saying, ‘My theology is a simple muddle; I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design or indeed of design of any kind, in the details.’ So he identified himself as an agnostic, but seems to have been a deist kind of agnostic – ie God set things going but has no further involvement in creation.

There’s some great research and insight into Darwin’s struggle with faith in Nick Spencer’s book, Darwin and God. You can see my interview with Nick here.