Darwin’s Deadly Deception and the Devil’s Gospel, Part 7

 

By Clint Bishard

Jesus Created Ministries

Last week, I concluded with a statement from Darwin’s ‘Origin’ that stated if I did not agree with Lyell’s geology, then I should at once close his book.  However, given that I am a rebel against Darwin and the geology of Lyell, I continue to read the ‘Origin’ in spite of the fact that Darwin instructed me to stop.  Yet the quote from last week clearly shows how influential geology and Lyell, in particular, were over Darwin.  It was not that Lyell and the other geologists were evolutionists (only geologically); they were in fact still creationists in regards to life (biology).  They believed that God independently created the different species on earth at different times over the vast millions of years they were now preaching.  They still held to the immutability of the species.  In fact, virtually all naturalists were creationists at the time of the first publishing of Darwin’s ‘Origin’ in 1859.  This is captured very well by the following quote from Darwin:

“We see this in the fact that the most eminent palaeontologists, namely, Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability of species.”[1]

Even so, it was still the compromising geology of Darwin’s day that moved him away from the Bible as his authority.  By rejecting Noah’s Flood as global they set the stage for science in general to reject the Bible as an authority for scientific thought.  Darwin makes this point very clear in a personal letter to Charles Lyell shortly before his publication of the ‘Origin.’  Darwin was concerned that his potential publisher, Murray, would not publish his book because it was contrary to Genesis.  He asked for Lyell’s opinion on what he should say to Murray to increase his chances of publication of the ‘Origin.’  Note: Darwin often signed his letters to Lyell as “your most affectionate disciple” or something similar.

“Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more UN-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable.  That I do not discuss the origin of man.  That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, etc., etc., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem to me fair.  Or had I better say NOTHING to Murray, and assume that he cannot object to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological Treatise which runs slap counter to Genesis.”[2]

In short, Darwin purposely stayed away from the origin of man and any discussions of Genesis to make his book more palatable for sale (even though he fully believed that man was part of the whole evolutionary process by natural selection as he was proposing).  The point I want to highlight most is that Darwin clearly believed Murray could not object to the unbiblical nature of the ‘Origin’ given that many geological works had already been published clearly contradicting the book of Genesis (Lyell’s included).  And thus it is shown true that a little bad leaven can corrupt the whole lump (1 Cor 5).  I hope you will join me next week as we continue to look into the life and legacy of Charles Darwin.