Around Darwin's beliefs

"I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
Charles Darwin


So much has been written about Darwin, that people are overwhelmed by the amount and content of all those statements, enough to discourage them to go to Darwin's own copious works. And the fact is, that beyond Darwin's opinions or conclusions on the very evolutionist issues that have made him famous, he was a philosophical mind of the very first order.
An incredible observer, subtle, precise,witty, and despite everything written against him by men that lack this virtue, he was an extremely humble and sober thinker.

He knew quite well the limits that many men, both from the religious as from the scientific field, completely seem to ignore, namely, that God and the Origins of the universe are matters just beyond our understanding.

I will go one step further, these things lie even far beyond all the possible streching of our imagination.

I will give a simple example:
Suppose that a microbe situated on a tiny spot of the skin in your ankle tries to make a composition of what you are.
Of course, someone may say that my comparison is preposterous due to the fact that the microbe is supposedly a sort of mindless entity, at least completely un-rational. But on behalf of the microbe I could say that in comparison, knowing what we know -which is only a glimpse- of the size of the universe-, the microbe has a big advantage over us, the scale is far smaller than between God and us.

Why are both scientists and religious men so eager to give their verdict on this most absurd matter?

Because of Fear. Unbearable Fear.


Pascal wrote: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me"

In the original French the phrase sounds even more depicting of that sense of horror that overcomes this little creature that we are when confronted with such vastness.

The need for some kind of certainty in the midst of the unfathomable, has always been an incentive for producing theories.
We must not forget, though, that such measures are nothing but placebos. Sort of intelectual barbirutates or moral benzodiazepines to diminish the excruciating "angst" that overwhelms the thinking animal confronting such a "Beast".


Darwin, as many many thinking men -my most humble truly yours one of them- could not possibly accept that an All-Benevolent God could possibly be behind so much pain, anguishes and catastrophes as we have down here. Such a though must certainly be simply abhorrent for any rational creature. Although priests of every faith are an exception. Or perhaps they simply do not enter into the first proposition.

My own predicament is rather awful. As I cannot rationally accept that a Good God could be behind all this, if there is a God after all behind this, he could only be my worst enemy. In the very best of the possible agreements, mutual love would be definitely out of the question.

To soothe my very own and very intense "fear and tremble", I am on the side of the old Gnostics, who believed that this whole manifestation was the work of the evil Demiurge, and that the Good, All Loving God rests away from all this pestilence.

May we all thrust and rest in His Profound Love and Peace which most certainly CANNOT be from this world.

PS: Yes, I know, if we accept this gnostic proposal we must confront the fact that the GOOD GOD that has nothing to do with all this is not "almighty" as an alien force is operating beyond his realm...Well, I began this disquisition quoting Darwin on the impossibilities of our mind to grasp such things. "THIS", which the ancients depicted as "Mysterium tremens".



Manuel Gerardo Monasterio
Jardines de Prometeo,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
at 10.10 AM September 4, 2007