I hope to have shown in this chapter that, on the eve of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the world was, theologically speaking, a much more complex place than some people might lead us to believe. Doubt, scepticism, and unbelief were anciently established in the world of philosophy, and “atheism” had long been a term of abuse. The idea of humans as programmed machines responding to stimuli had been around for over two centuries by 1859, while “scientific” social theories were already being actively propagated at the time of Darwin’s sailing away on HMS Beagle in 1831. There were also those who openly mocked the Bible – and occasionally ended up behind bars – long before Darwin was even born. Since the late seventeenth century, too, devoutly Christian scientists such as Robert Boyle had been actively engaged in arguing against those who believed that the new science must inevitably make a person an atheist.
So what can we say about the widespread notion that until brave evolutionists dared to challenge the church, everyone did as they were told and dissent from its authority was effectively non-existent? The answer is simple: it is pure myth!