Darwin’s Deadly Deception and the Devil’s Gospel, Part
8
By Clint Bishard
Jesus Created Ministries
Last
week, I finished by stating that some bad leaven had come into Charles Darwin’s
life. The bad leaven was the rejection of Noah’s Flood by the scientific
community and the acceptance of Lyell’s uniformitarian geology. This new
geology was not a matter of science triumphing over the Bible, but a matter of
the philosophy of naturalism taking over the scientific community and driving
the starting assumptions. For example, the geologic column is full of
evidences for catastrophe, but these evidences were ignored in order to try and
explain the present state of the earth by currently observable processes. Thus
a past global flood has no place in this new naturalistic philosophy.
I have spent much
time emphasizing the place of geology in the background of Darwin, with good
reason. Darwin has been singled out more than any other as the one who thrust
the philosophy of evolution onto the world (as noted in this article by
myself). Darwin was, and still is, verbally tarred and feathered by many for
his views. However, the naturalistic views of biology that Darwin put forward
in the ‘Origin’ were just the outcrop of the naturalism already being accepted
by virtually all of the scientific community and a lot of church before and
during the days of Darwin (see Dr. Terry Mortenson’s book ‘The Great Turning
Point’ for information on the few geologist of Darwin’s day remaining true
to the Scriptures).
Darwinian evolution
is a product of naturalism much more than it is a cause. It was the result of
the compromises by the scientific community and the church. These compromises
are what set the stage for Darwin’s proposal that natural selection plus
millions of years equaled biological evolution. In other words, without the
compromise of accepting millions of years of earth history in the laying down
of the geologic column, no biological evolution would have been possible. As Darwin clearly articulates in the ‘Origin’:
“I am well aware that this doctrine of
natural selection, exemplified in the above imaginary instances, is open to the
same objections which were first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views
on "the modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but
we now seldom hear the agencies which we see still at work, spoken of as
trifling and insignificant, when used in explaining the excavation of the
deepest valleys or the formation of long lines of inland cliffs. Natural
selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited
modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology
has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial
wave, so will natural selection banish the belief of the continued creation of
new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification in their
structure.”
“The belief that species were immutable
productions was almost unavoidable as long as the history of the world was
thought to be of short duration.”
In other words, Darwin stated that the whole philosophical idea that today’s more complex life forms have
slowly developed from simpler life forms was impossible as long as man held to
the Biblical timeframe of earth history. Additionally, he stated that just as
the views of naturalism have taken over geology and removed the explanation of
the Flood, so likewise would his naturalistic explanations for the development
of life takeover biology and remove the supernatural explanation for the origin
of the different life forms. I hope you will continue with me next week as we
highlight some of the sad consequences of this naturalistic takeover of
science.
