Page 357 - Islam and Far Eastern Religions

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The foremost evolutionists have supported Far Eastern religions
since the 19th century, with Thomas H. Huxley being the most promi-
nent name of those responsible for rallying support behind Darwin.

His arguments with scientists and men of religion who advocated the
belief in creation, and his fervent speeches and articles in support of
Darwinism, made him the most famous Darwinist of the 19th century.
Huxley’s interest in superstitious Far Eastern religions, in particular
Buddhism, is less well known.
Huxley fiercely opposed the representatives of Divine religions
like Judaism and Christianity and regarded Buddhism as a suitable re-
ligion for secular western civilization, at least in his own opinion. This
subject is examined by the article titled “Huxley’s Buddhism in
Evolution and Ethics”, published in the magazine Philosophy East and
West. The article printed the following excerpt from Huxley’s book
Evolution and Ethics:

“... [Buddhism is] a system which knows no God
[Surely Allah is beyond that] in the Western
sense; which denies a soul to man; which
counts the belief in immortality a blunder and
hope of it a sin; which refuses any efficacy to
prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to
nothing but their own efforts for salvation ...
yet [it] spread over a considerable moiety of the
Old World with marvelous rapidity and is
still, with whatever base admixture of for-
eign superstitions, the dominant creed of
a large fraction of mankind”. 151

Thomas H. Huxley,
one of the leading
proponents of
Darwinism in the
th
19 century.