Darwin’s Deadly Deception and the Devil’s Gospel, Part 5

 

By Clint Bishard

Jesus Created Ministries

In part 4 of this series I noted Darwin’s views concerning the species and that he went from being a Bible believer to one who rejected the Bible as an authority.  One might be tempted to view Darwin’s move away from the Bible as the result of his conclusions concerning the development of life on earth and his growing conviction that the species were mutable (changing).  In fact, Darwin even came to despise the term ‘species’ because it carried the connotation in peoples minds that life forms were somewhat fixed to some degree.  These thoughts of Darwin are clearly captured from the following quotes from his most famous book:

“Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained--namely, that each species has been independently created--is erroneous.  I am fully convinced that species are not immutable.”[1]

“As species are produced and exterminated by slowly acting and still existing causes, and not by miraculous acts of creation”[2]

“The term species thus comes to be a mere useless abstraction, implying and assuming a separate act of creation”[3]

These quotes show that Darwin once viewed life forms as being the distinct acts of creation by God, but soon changed his mind and accepted the concepts of evolution.  However, the evidence in Darwin’s own writings show that it was not biology that first moved Darwin away from believing the truthfulness of God’s Word, but it was the erroneous geology of the day that moved him away from accepting the inherency of the Scriptures.

Darwin and Geology

Before Darwin became known as a scientific giant in biology, he was more prominently known for his accomplishments in geology.  Unfortunately, Darwin’s geological roots were influenced from compromising men during his experience at seminary.  From Darwin’s own account of his time at Cambridge, a professor J. S. Henslow was Darwin’s greatest mentor.[4]  Darwin was impressed with Henslow’s character and religious devotion.  As Darwin noted of Henslow, “He was deeply religious, and so orthodox that he told me one day he should be grieved if a single word of the Thirty-nine Articles (the historic Anglican statement of doctrine) were altered.”[5]  However, although Henslow may have been deeply religious, he was a man accepting the new compromising geological views that taught that the geologic column was laid down over many different periods of time and not the result of the one event of Noah’s Flood.  Significantly, one of the leading geologists of these scripturally compromising views, professor Sedgwick, was also at Cambridge and close to Henslow.  As Darwin noted concerning his time at seminary, “In the spring Henslow persuaded me to think of Geology, and introduced me to Sedgwick.”[6]  

As we shall see next week, this set the stage for Darwin’s dive into geology, eventual acceptance of Charles Lyell’s old-age uniformitarian views, and one of the major influences that moved him to disregard the authority of the Bible.