There is a bitter debate raging between the evolutionists and creationists, about how this world came about and how life came into it. Dawkins is the most aggressive one as far as I know, and the Christian Fundamentalists of US.
But how did Darwin really feel about all this, his theory of evolution and the world he saw around him, the belief systems he found about him?
Was he an atheist, agnostic, or a believer?
In TimesOnline, there is a really good article, which gives you ten quotes of Darwin about this.
Darwin comes across as a reasonable and self-aware, not a fragmented thinker. He put enough value on his findings, he was an agnostic. But convictions did not have overriding value for him, he contributed to the South American Missionary Society. He thought science and religion should go hand in hand, he trusted his science, but he says he never ever could go as far as to deny the existence of God.
I think religion trusts the logic of association, and science the logic of inference, induction, causation, whatever. We might prefer one over the other, but it is our mind that does it: the reality of the world exists outside the mind.
It is better to be practical and accomodating.
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