Darwin and Descartes

Darwin admitted that to suppose the eye just evolved seemed absurd. (Absurd in the highest degree, were his exact words.) He didn't let this stop him however, as he went on to show how it was possible to doubt even this seeming proof for creation.

Quotes and comments;

A. "To suppose the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." [1.]

But having admitted this, he then went on to warn us against being misled by our intuitions, as they are highly susceptible to misconception.

This sounds a lot like Descartes to me. So, did Darwin use Descartes method of radical doubt, and apply it to the 'intuition' of creation? It would appear so.

Darwin plays the game of doubting the 'intuitions' of creationists (he of course didn't believe the Bible was the word of God) but placing great confidence in his own anti-creationist intuitions. That the world was not created by God, was something he apparently couldn't doubt. [2.]

Notes;
1. Darwin's God - Cornelius Hunter/p.74
2. In my opinion Charles Darwin was a materialist; but I doubt many think he was anything more than a lukewarm deist.
3. When Darwin makes reference to the amazing 'contrivances' of the eye I assume he was referring to William Paley.
e.g. Paley compares the telescope and the eye in ch. 3 of Natural Theology;
"How is it possible, under circumstances of such close affinity, and under the operation of equal evidence, to exclude contrivance from the one; yet to acknowledge the proof of contrivance having been employed, as the plainest and clearest of all propositions, in the other?..."
- Paley uses several words Darwin later did; e.g. contrivance, correction, adjust...