Smoky Mountains Sunrise
Showing posts with label Laura Keynes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laura Keynes. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

I’m a Direct Descendant of Darwin, But I Have Discovered the Beauty of the Catholic Faith

The author’s great-great-great grandfather is a New Atheist hero, but she is a Catholic apologist 


From the Catholic Herald (UK)
By Laura Keynes

A first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species (PA)

‘Are you related to the economist?” People sometimes ask when they see my surname. I explain that, yes, John Maynard Keynes is my great-great-uncle – his brother Geoffrey married Margaret Darwin, my great-grandmother. “So you’re related to Darwin too?” Yes, he’s my great-great-great grandfather. Eyes might fall on the cross around my neck: “And you’re a Christian?” Yes, a Catholic. “How does a Darwin end up Catholic?”

The question genuinely seems to puzzle people. After all, Darwin ushered in a new era of doubt with his theory of evolution, and the Bloomsbury Group, of which Keynes was a part, influenced modern attitudes to feminism and sexuality. How can I be a product of this culture, and yet Catholic? The implication is that simple exposure to my ancestors’ life work should have shaken me out of my backwards error.