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Charles Darwin himself exemplified the Argument from Pique, alluded to in past entries in this series, to a tee.

The threat which such thinking posed to theistic beliefs was not lost on the Roman Catholic Church when Pope Pius IX convened the First Vatican Council of 1869.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) provides the closest chronological fit with Darwin.

Of immediate relevance to Darwin’s generation were writers who can be traced in a fairly direct line from the beginning of the 19th century.

As Alec Ryrie pointed out in his history of Doubt, “intellectuals and philosophers may think they make the weather, but they are more often driven by it.”