The American Spectator

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This article appears in the December-January issue of The American Spectator. To subscribe, please click here.

blockquote> em>The Sea of Faith br> Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore br> Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. br> But now I only hear br> Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, br> Retreating, to the breath br> Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear br> And naked shingles of the world. /em> br> -- From "Dover Beach" br> By Matthew Arnold /blockquote>

WHEN HE PUBLISHED "Dover Beach" in 1867, Matthew Arnold could only view with despair the receding tide of religious belief among the British educated classes. Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) had accelerated the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the Sea of Faith, by permitting a new "creation story" in which God's design was displaced by blind natural forces as the source of all life. By the mid-20th century, the neo-Darwinian account of the origin of life had been enshrined in some circles as inerrant orthodoxy.

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