Mrs. Darwin's Dilemma

A well-heeled, well-educated, and highly intelligent woman lives happily with her beloved husband and their children in the Christian community of Downs until her whole world turns upside down. Her faith and her marriage are threatened by her husband's famous book. The faithful become so angry they drive her and her young children from their home and she is forced to live with the dreaded Wallaces, her husband's "weird" friends.

In the tolerant community of Ups that admires her free-thinking husband and happily welcomes her, the Wallaces make her feel surprisingly secure and right at home. They politely and humbly question their own (atheistic) wisdom and invite her to question hers. As she probes her own beliefs, she discovers, as we would, that many hidden doubts come to the surface and that her long suppressed truth-seeking impulses were as strong as her need to believe.

She becomes ashamed of her weakness when she meets a humble ex-American slave, who proudly calls himself "Doubting Thomas," who has suffered terribly but who is strong enough not to embrace unbelievable dogmas just for emotional comfort. What if her own reasoning process convinces her that her husband is right and that the atheists acted rightly in the crisis while most of the theists acted abominably? Does she have the strength to conquer her justifiably strong pride and admit that her thoughts and actions were wrong to her perpetually right, though faithless, husband? If so, what replaces her faith?

Everyone who has had a religious experience confidently believes that atheists would be converted, had they shared it. If the faithful experienced what Mrs. Darwin does and still have firm faith, could their truth-seeking impulses need a friendly boost? Does faith mean "not wanting to know what is true," as Nietzsche wrote?