An ad hominem Creationist Legend

b informs me via email that he's recently had a run in with a creationist and asks me to confirm or deny her bizarre argument:

I was conversing with someone on the train today and wanted a point clarified. So rarely is talking to strangers on a train a good idea, but they got my attention when I briefly looked up from my book, The Blind Watchmaker, and they started asking about what I was reading - then I noticed the "Jesus Saves" badge - and instantly regretted talking about the nature of the book as they got off and racing.

Anyway, this fairy tale enthusiast said (and do note this does not affect my philosophy but is simply a question of fact I would like to refute with confidence should it ever arise in future) that Darwin retracted his theories before his death. Is this true? If so, is it a scientfic retraction, or a retraction for his family's sake? If it is not true, what is their allegation based in?

Absolutely false!

Unfortunately this urban legend is not as uncommon as it should be. But you've come to the right place -- a creationist friend of mine once tried this one on me and I was pretty confident in telling her that she had been misinformed as I had already read more than one Darwin biography. (As an aside, if you like thick, detailed biographies, full of family anecdotes: Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist argues that the troubled political climate of Victorian England and the influence of Malthus on economics were major influences on Darwin's theory.)

I don't recall whether I successfully disabused her of an urban legend that she probably really wanted to believe but I have since discovered that even the more honest creationists don't even believe the story!

The only other thing I should mention is that your little friend is conflating 2 separate questions:

Did Darwin recant his scientific theory? and
Did Darwin become a Christian on his deathbed?

Now, in that urban legend they are also conflated, but one must remember that no one really thought Christianity and evolution necessarily incompatible until the 1920s. Sure, people thought that it was dangerous to make God seem so superfluous, but there weren't really any young earth creationists as the geology was already so well proven. All the criticisms of Natural Selection before the 20s were scientific questions. The correct answer to both of these questions is actually "no". But it could well have been "yes" to one but not the other.

The reason I mention that is because Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey! He had very influential friends who were able to get an agnostic buried in THE cathedral beside Newton and so many others. Apparently he was even nominated for a knighthood just before the Origin came out but, Richard Owen, a scientific enemy, had heard enough about Natural Selection to tell Vicki that it'd be a bad idea. (As an aside, Newton, although Christian, was quite the heretic and probably shouldn't have been buried in Westminster Abbey either.)