Abstract
What did Darwin have to say about religion? What were his religious, or anti-religious, beliefs? Did he believe that his theory of evolution by natural selection was incompatible with belief in a Creator? Was it his revolutionary science that turned him into an agnostic? These questions have a special urgency in 2009, the year that marks the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his most celebrated book, On the Origin of Species (1859). It is important to answer them in a balanced way because Darwin's authority and example are continually invoked to justify metaphysical and theological claims that go far beyond the details of his evolutionary biology and that of his scientific successors.