Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, (although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. ibid.
Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.
This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt – can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake. ibid.
Nothing is more remarkable than the spread of scepticism or rationalism during the latter half of my life. ibid.
Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals. Charles Darwin, notebooks
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars. Charles Darwin
I am not the least afraid to die. Charles Darwin
I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions. Charles Darwin
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. Charles Darwin
Darwin’s work would call into question God’s role as creator of Nature. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Disbelief III: The Final Hour, BBC 2004
This guy’s only interested in creepy crawlies, and he’s obsessed with how they got to be so local ... Wherever you go, the little beetles seemed to have worked out how to adapt to the amazing variety of habitats in the world ... He let some other guy who has the same idea publish first and he blows everybody away ... After you, Mr [Charles] Darwin ... [Alfred Russel] Wallace you can tell is a noble spirit. James Burke, Connections s3e6: Elementary Stuff, BBC 1997
Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favourable circumstances. George C Williams