That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.
Charles DarwinOn seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”
Charles DarwinIt is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction.
Charles DarwinI think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.
Charles DarwinIt strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching.
Charles DarwinIt is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Charles Darwin