Term Paper: Throughout history, many have investigated Charles Darwin's religious beliefs and have provided a wide variety of answers. Why do his personal beliefs matter when it comes to a scientific question that Darwin studied? Darwin excluded the question of the Creator from his works because it was irrelevant to his scientific research, and the debate over Darwin's faith arises because of his conflicting accounts of his personal faith and the way in which early childhood and adolescence shaped his religious views. at different times and provided a basis for his groundbreaking research. The source of much controversy in Darwin's faith arises in his account of his education. Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England, to Robert and Susannah Darwin. His parents were not particularly devout in their religious practices while he was growing up, but they trained him in other ways for his future career. His father was a doctor and took young Darwin with him to visit patients and explain the causes of ailments and their treatments. From his father, Darwin understood how observations could lead to a theory (Darwin, p. 37). His grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a revolutionary scientist of his time who published a work called Zoönomia in which he examined adaptations in the world. human body without taking into account the common belief that the purpose of the Creator's works was to bring immediate benefit to the human race (Barlow p. 150). Darwin recounts in his autobiography that during his early years he read his grandfather's writings “without [they] producing any effect on me. It is probable that the fact of having heard such opinions held and praised rather early in my life may have favored me in holding the......middle of paper......too important as it seemed to me to be admitted like the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses… I gradually find myself disbelieving in Christianity as a divine revelation” (Darwin, p. 86). So while the historical inaccuracies frustrated him and led him to disbelief, he later claimed to be “very reluctant to give up my belief” and found himself trying to imagine evidence to convince himself. However, “gradually disbelief crept upon [him] at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete” (Darwin, p. 86-87). He does not say when this transformation occurred in his life, but in May 1878 in a letter he wrote: “I think that generally (and even more so as I grow older) but not always, an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind. soul” (Life and Letters, p. 55). For even Darwin himself describes his theology as “mere confusion” (Life and Letters)