The Virtual Coffeehouse

There was one thing has been bugging me about the reading. Hopefully some input can help me out.

Anyway, during the Victorian era religious doubt started to take hold, with Darwin's publication on his theory of evolution, the doubt became dissent. What I want to know is why there was growing religious dissent during the Victorian Era specifically; say instead of the Romantic period.

I know there was probably always a degree of doubt, but during the Victorian Era it was much more rampant. Was it because of industrialization and new scientific discoveries? That would be my guess, but I would love some feedback.
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That's the impression I'm getting, too. One thing that struck me about the passage from Huxley we're reading for tomorrow was how scientific his argument for agnosticism is. He's basically saying that if there's no proof of something, you can't say with certainty that it's true, even if it's something religious. He is looking for "logically satisfactory evidence" in order to believe something, and this seems to me like a very scientific and empirical way to look at the world (p. 1436).

DanWang wrote:What I want to know is why there was growing religious dissent during the Victorian Era specifically; say instead of the Romantic period.

I know there was probably always a degree of doubt, but during the Victorian Era it was much more rampant. Was it because of industrialization and new scientific discoveries? That would be my guess, but I would love some feedback.

You make a great point, Dan. Religious doubt became an important theme not only of English, but of Western, thought well before the Victorian period. We can trace the growth and development of this theme from about the time of the Copernican revolution, when science began to emerge as a competitor to religion as the best approach to understanding the natural world. The Church had the whole sun/earth thing wrong because it looked to books and ancient wisdom for knowledge of nature. Science got it right by looking at the evidence: by being, as Amanda puts it, "empirical."

The rise of science helped spread doubt during the 18th century's "age of reason." Still, doubt remained a minor theme, with few thinkers professing atheism. Many found it possible to reconcile belief in God with science by adopting the 18th century's version of the "intelligent design" hypothesis, Deism. A natural world that works according to fixed, unchangeable natural laws, Deists held, is itself evidence that a designing intelligence brought nature into being.

But Deism wasn't itself consistent with many of the specifics of Christianity, so it, too, contributed to the erosion of traditional religious belief.

Then, as Altick explains, scholarly study of the Bible itself, beginning in the 18th century and continuing into the 19th, raised doubts about whether a thinking person could really believe in the literal truth of the creation account in Genesis or other biblical narratives.

So yes, the Romantics of the early 19th c. were doubters in some cases - most famously Shelley. Carlyle, whose Sartor Resartus of 1832 might be counted a Romantic work, creates a protagonist who has lost his traditional religious belief and must therefore find "new clothes" in which to dress his sense that there is something "spiritual" in human beings and nature that science can't describe.

But Darwin created more doubters. Why? Not because his theory of evolution by natural selection was incompatible with religious belief. It was still possible to believe that this natural selection process was the creation of a divine intelligence.

The reason Darwin created more doubters was surely that his theory didn't require belief in a divine creator. As a natural process, natural selection could explain why the world of living things is so perfectly adapted to its environment without appeal to an intelligence that would make it so. Natural selection showed that living things are adapted perfectly to their environments because if they weren't they'd be dead. Nature's hallmark is variety; all living things display a range of traits, some adaptive, others not; those with the adaptive traits survive at a greater rate than those with the nonadaptive ones, so over great stretches of time the adaptive traits remain and the nonadaptive ones disappear.

DanWang wrote:There was one thing has been bugging me about the reading. Hopefully some input can help me out.

Anyway, during the Victorian era religious doubt started to take hold, with Darwin's publication on his theory of evolution, the doubt became dissent. What I want to know is why there was growing religious dissent during the Victorian Era specifically; say instead of the Romantic period.

I know there was probably always a degree of doubt, but during the Victorian Era it was much more rampant. Was it because of industrialization and new scientific discoveries? That would be my guess, but I would love some feedback.
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In reading over Dan's question I was also reminded of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus as Professor Schacht referenced earlier. Huxley writes that 'Sartor Resartus led me to know know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology"

Huxley wrote during the closing of the Romantics and the emergence of the Victorians. I think that perhaps one of the things which sets him so vividly apart from the Romantics is his interest in religion. He writes that 'The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief, their old Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof, crumble down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; or eyes never saw him?" - Carlyle points out that his unbelief lies in the absence of a visual God and breakable temples.

In much the same way Huxley writes that 'And, on careful analysis of the nature of this faith, it will too often be found to be, not the mystic process of unity with the Divine, understood by the religious enthusiast; but that which the candid simlicity of a Sunday scholoce once defined it to be. "Faith," said this unconscious plagiarist of Tertullian, "is the power of saying you blieve things which are incredible"

Both men point out their concern in believing something which cannot be seen or proven. Both then go on in their essays to reference/discuss the grown of materialism. Carlye talks about the stomach/soul idea and Huxley points to 'materialism/idealism' and 'theism/aftheism'.

I think in answer to Dan's question that this debate of evolution is popularized by the growing materialism and capitalism of the Victorian period. Oscar Wilde cites this period as a time of decadence and gaudyness. I think this relates to religion in that it could be argued that people are becoming too involved in this materialism and forgetting about their souls/god/religion in general.

On a side note I'm finding it rather hard discuss this particular topic in class. I struggle finding something of value to say because both religion and evolution have their merits. Having been educated in a public school and completing my religious education on Sundays I feel like I have the best of both worlds. Perhaps it is knowing that if I begin talking about these issues I'll come to find myself having to choose between the two theories. Anyway just wanted to mention that; regardless I'm finding it incredibly intruging listening to what others have to offer on the topic. I think it's a rather subjective and personal topic and am curious to see what the Victorians and my classmates have to say.

In the second paragraph I meant to write *Carlyle came at the close of the Romantics and emergence of the Victorians* not Huxley -sorry about that