Why you should become a Bible-believing anarchist
who also believes the universe was created around 4004 B.C.
Gregory L. Bahnsen, who earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy at USC, does a detailed survey of the literature before 1859 and concludes,
Therefore, on all sides—philosophy, science, and theology—the way had been paved for the arrival of Darwinism in 1859. It is more than evident that Darwin's ideas were not novel; he simply painted a common philosophical and anti-theistic position with a superficial cosmetic of scientific respectability. Charles Hodge was already aware, just a little over a decade after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, that evolutionary speculation was surviving the critical attacks upon it because of its "essential harmony with the spirit of the age...." [Systematic Theology (1871), II, 15] The acceptance of the theory of evolution stemmed from the milieu created by philosophic opinion-speculation fostered by men like Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Goethe, Krause, Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, Diderot, LaMettrie, d'Holbach, Buchner, and Schleiermacher; Darwin's scientific surmises had been anticipated by men like Buffon, Lamarck, Saint-Hilaire, Chambers, Spencer, and his own grandfather. Men were living in the age of Darwinism prior to the publication of Darwin's book. And the philosophic developments which appeared subsequent to the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution had already been manifested by 1859.
Note the names Bahnsen covers in philosophy and theology:
This is a philosophical and theological trend that began two hundred years before Darwin's book in 1859.
Darwin's scientific surmises had been anticipated by men who were not necessarily "scientists," any more than today's flat-earth bloggers are "scientists"; they are "dabblers" and propagandists. They might be very smart (high I.Q.), and they might have filing cabinets full of scientific-sounding factoids, but you might not consider them to be what you think of as a "scientist." Bahnsen mentions
These were the bloggers of their day. They had influence.
Strauss has been quoted elsewhere on this site.