Robert Shedinger: Darwin’s Sacred Cause is “Historical Fiction”

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Philosophy, Astronomy, Society & Culture, Life Sciences

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s ID the Future, science-and-religion scholar Robert Shedinger makes the case that a well-known biography of Charles Darwin, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, is deeply misleading. Specifically, the book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore holds that Darwin was significantly motivated in his scientific work by abolitionist sentiments; and Shedinger says, not so fast. He had spent considerable time reading Darwin’s correspondence and had seen no evidence of this thesis, so he reread Darwin’s Sacred Cause, this time tracking down all the key citations the book offered as evidence, and a pattern soon emerged. The sources the authors cite didn’t actually support their thesis. Some were totally irrelevant. Some were cited completely out of context. In other cases, the authors gave Read More ›

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0:00.0	I d the future a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:12.4	Welcome to I. D the. I'm your guest host, Mike Keys. Today we get to have a follow-up conversation with Dr Robert Shetiner.
0:22.0	I mentioned in the previous episode that he had with Dr. Robert Shetinger.
0:22.8	I mentioned in the previous episode
0:24.3	that he occupies an endowed chair at Luther College
0:27.8	and there since 2000 after he got his PhD
0:31.3	in religious studies from Temple University in Philadelphia.
0:34.5	He also has a BS in civil engineering, so he has his feet in science and in theology.
0:40.9	The main question that has animated his research is what is religion and we've noted how that has been very helpful as he's been reading through Darwin's correspondence and what others have said about him and published reviews of his various books.
0:56.2	And we're getting better acquainted with Darwin's religious views or quasi-religious philosophical views.
1:03.0	So thank you for joining us again, Dr. Schechtenner.
1:07.0	Thank you.
1:08.0	It's good to be here.
1:09.0	All right, so we were talking last about Darwinian mythology and some of this mythology might have its place in the way historians deal with Darwin.
1:22.0	So could historians themselves have their own sort of mythologies about Darwin?
1:27.0	In particular, I know you have thought carefully about the very influential book called Darwin's Sacred Cause
1:35.0	authored by Adrian Desmond and James Moore
1:38.0	and you question some of their historiographical methods
1:42.0	and you argue that, because see they argue that Darwin's
1:47.0	theory about the origin of species was primarily motivated by his abolitionist sentiments. but you've reached some different conclusions.
1:56.3	How so?
1:57.3	Yeah, so I had read Darwin's Sacred Cause some years ago early in my sort of exploration of Darwin.
	...

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