Reconciling God and Darwin

Charles Darwin was absolutely terrified of going public with his theory of evolution. The basic idea of natural selection first dawned on him in 1838, but it was twenty years before he finally announced it to the world. In other words, for two whole decades, he sat on one of the most important scientific theories of all time, only sharing his bold speculations with a handful of close friends. And throughout that time, he worried and he worried about how the public at large would respond when he finally unveiled the theory. In 1844, still fourteen years before that fateful day arrived, Darwin admitted in a letter to a friend that he was ‘almost convinced’ that species change over time, and described this admission as ‘like confessing a murder’.