The Word Cloud

This idea came to me in a dream, and has remained just an idea for several weeks but I keep returning to it in my mind and in conversation with friends. It's very wispy still, but I (a firm believer in evolution, lets just get that clear :) am intrigued by the notion that around the time Darwin was on the brink of becoming a "naturalist country parson" he was presented with the journey to south america and embarked on a journey from there. He wasn't fully convinced by religion at this time, and would have no doubt found his way to his theories eventually..but what if somehow he was presented with evidence of a higher being or some kind of creationist proof? Would I have it as concrete evidence i.e a conversation of sorts with 'God' or more of a crisis within him, perhaps a spiritual journey that led him to adventures of another kind? I'm already doubting the manner in which I would approach this, if at all but it feels better to get it out as it were. Be kind guys, I am oh so very new here! :) Opinions very welcome, I haven't written other than a journal since I had my three children, but the desire to do so again is rising up every day. Just wish my brain power would catch up to my enthusiasm!

Not sure what your asking here, PP. Are you wanting to write an imaginary conversation between Charles Darwin and God, and then take him on from there aboard the Beagle and show how his encounter affected the developemnet of his theories - either ending up exactly as they did, regardless, or in your fictional account, developing along rather different lines?

How you wrote such a scenario would depend very much on how you chose to view God. I think you'd have to decide from the start (without necessarily overtly revealing to your readers) whether the God Darwin encounters is, in fact, the Creator of the universe, or some other conglomerate distortion drawn from man's immaginations through the centuries. That is, whether he actually is God, or just some mythical being.

If the latter, you face one set of problems. How do you converse with a myth? Is the conversation all inside his own head? If so, is his reasoning going to be much different, if at all, from what we already know of his 'evolutionary journey'?

Because of that, you may decide it's got he be the former. It really is the Creator of the universe he's talking to. A different set of problems. If he goes off on his journey of discovery already 'knowing the answer', as it were, how could he ever have developed his theory? Perhaps he still could, if he began to doubt his God encounter in the light of what he thinks is evidence to the contrary. That could be an interesting angle - that in spite of God granting him direct access to hear the truth, he still allowed the athesitic doctrines of his peers to influence his thinking about interpreting the evidence he was discovering.

Or, as I said earlier, your ficticious version could show how his God encounter enabled him to put a quite different (and equally valid) interpretation on the evidence he collected on his Beagle journey. You've certainly got plenty of scope here. Good luck with it. Write on, PP.

Maybe God believes in evolution and that's how she/he designed things? The twists are endless. I think this is one of those times when you need to let yourself draft very loosely, even if it's just for a couple of thousand words, to see where your writing takes you. A very interesting idea.

Thank you for the input..it is very much needed! As I said its wisps of ideas and I definitely need a more concrete direction before I decide where to take it. The mythical being idea is good - I found this intriguing when I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, it's exciting to think that you could through sheer belief bring a god or godlike entity into existence, and also that they would be flawed in various ways. I would like to explore Darwin himself, his relationships with others (his father and Emma Wedgewood?) and gain a feel for how he may have intrepreted evidence that questioned or directly contradicted what he came to believe about the creation of the known world. I think I will keep researching, get plenty of notes down and see if things start to emerge for me. Thanks again, I very hesitant to voice an idea and you have been great.

EmmaD is the person to ask about Darwin! She'll be by sometime soon.

Others have given you good input, so I will only add that it grabs me as a potentiallyfascinating storyline.

Oops! Space went missing.

I claim no special knowledge , but I should think that if God could provide scientifically robust proof - logical, repeatable, peer reviewed (which might be a bit tricky, given that He's peerless) and all the other things that scientists properly require before they consider a theory proved, then CD would accept the existence of such a Being, as the only possible explanation for that evidence being as it provably is. If not, not.

By all accounts his grandfather and most of the rest of the Lunar Society were aetheists in all but name, so it would be nothing new to doubt - they'd been doubting or even aetheisting for a good half-century. Joseph Priestley an exception, I think.

If you're interested in Emma and the Wedgwoods (Charles's mother was a Wedgwood, of course - Emma's aunt), there are now two biographies - Edna Healey's, and a more recent one by Loy.