Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was born in Shrewsbury, England, the son of a physician. As a naturalist, he won sponsors and government backing for an expedition on the military sailing ship HMS Beagle, where he made his famous observations on the differences in finches. Later he used what he had learned on this ship as evidence for his theory of evolution. Darwin is most famous for his ‘On the Origin of Species’ (1859), in which he suggested in the last lines of the first edition that “whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity,” therein, “life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed [by the Creator] into a few forms or into one .. from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” The bracketed phrase was added in the second edition of Origin. Not until his later work, The Descent of Man (1871), did Darwin proclaim that humans too had evolved by natural processes from lower forms of life. This view caused a revolution in the sciences, the reverberations of which are still being felt.
It was a turning point in modern thought because, in the minds of many, Darwin gave the first plausible explanation of how evolution could have occurred. By applying the principle of natural selection (the survival of the fittest) to variations within populations, Darwin was able to argue persuasively that over long periods of time small changes added up to large ones. These large changes can account for the origin of new species without the direct intervention of a supernatural Power, except perhaps to get the whole process going.
Darwin began as a Christian theist, was baptized in the Church of England, and despite his rejection of Christianity, was buried in Westminster Abbey. Although an Anglican, Darwin was sent to a school conducted by a Unitarian minister. He later entered the University of Cambridge in 1828 where, his father had decided, he should prepare for the ministry.
Darwin recognized “the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backward and Far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity.” Thus, “when reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” Darwin acknowledged that he once had been a creationist. He even spoke of it as a view “which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained” (Darwin, 30). “This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually become weaker” (Darwin, Autobiography, 92-93).
According to Ernst Mayr, Darwin had become an evolutionist some time between 1835 and 1837 (Mayr, x). Charles Darwin’s son and biographer, Francis Darwin said that “Although Darwin had nearly all the key ideas of the Origin in mind as early as 1838, he deliberated for twenty years before committing himself publicly to evolution” (F. Darwin, 3.18). Only a decade later (1848) Darwin was fully convinced of evolution, defiantly declaring to J. D. Hooker: “I don’t care what you say, my species theory is all gospel” (cited by Moore, 211).
Darwin [stated], “I was very unwilling to give up my belief. . . . thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct” (Autobiography, 86).
Darwin notes that the orthodox belief in hell was a particular influence in his rejection of Christianity. He wrote: “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine” (ibid., 87).
Darwin’s increased skepticism was completed by the death of his beloved daughter, Anne in 1851. This, of course, was just after his view in evolution had solidified (1844-1848) and before he wrote his famous Origins (1859).
Connected to the doctrine of eternal punishment, Darwin could see no reconciliation between the life of a perfect child and a vengeful God (ibid., 220). A month later, Darwin referred to himself as “the Devil’s Chaplain,” a satirical figure of speech of a confirmed unbeliever (Moore, 222).
Darwin gradually discarded theism for deism, leaving the single act of divine intervention for the creation of the first form or forms of life. This was apparently his view at the time of On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin wrote: “I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working
out of what we may call chance” (F. Darwin, 1.279; 2.105). With chance as his only continuing faith, the naturalist ventured so far as to call natural selection “my deity” .
[Later in life] (1879) Darwin was an agnostic, writing: “I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind” (cited by Moore, 204). Eventually, he wrote: “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic” (Darwin, Autobiography, 84).
His agnosticism notwithstanding, Darwin clearly denies ever being an atheist. He said, “In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in denying the existence of God” (cited by Moore, 204). Historians reject the apocryphal story of Darwin’s deathbed conversion. As late as 1879, many years after the Descent (1871), Darwin declared, “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist” (Letter 7, May 1879). Darwin himself was content to remain an agnostic.
Darwin should be commended for being generally careful not to overstate his case. Certainly this is the case in On the Origin of Species. Darwin acknowledged that his view was a theory, not a fact. He called it the “theory of evolution” as opposed to the “theory of Creation,” phrases he used many times in On the Origin of Species (e.g., 235, 435, 437).
Darwin is credited, even by creationists, with confirming the existence of small changes in the natural development of species (Micro-Evolution). They are even observable, as his study of the finches reveals. While creationists differ with Darwin as to whether these small changes can add up to large ones by natural selection over long periods of time, Darwin and others should be credited with the demise of the older platonic view of fixed forms on the level of what biologists call species.
Darwin also correctly saw the valuable function that natural selection plays in the development of life. The survival of the fittest is a fact of animal life, as a perusal of an African nature film will reveal. Again, creationists and evolutionists differ over just how much change natural selection can make and whether it is upward [(i.e. new species formed)]. But there is agreement that natural selection can and does make some significant biological changes in the development of life.
Darwin was well aware of the fact that the evidence for (or against) evolution was in the fossil record and that there were gaping holes in it. He, of course, hoped that future finds would fill in these gaps and confirm his “theory.” Sensing the lack of intermediate forms in the fossil record, Darwin confessed: “Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic change, and this is perhaps the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution]” (Darwin, Origin of Species, 152, emphasis added). Darwin confessed that we do not find “an infinite number of those fine transitional forms which, on our theory, have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life” (ibid., 161). He attributed this to the scarcity of the “geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept” (ibid.) and, others, to the alleged sparsity of transitional forms. But this is a virtually unfalsifiable argument from silence and begs the question in favor of transitional forms being there to begin with. The reality is that there are no missing links, but a missing chain, with only a few links here and a few there.
The fossil record is the only real evidence of what actually did occur, as opposed to what could have happened, so this is a very serious objection. And the subsequent period of about 140 years has not been friendly to Darwin. In spite of thousands of fossil finds, to borrow a term from Fred Hoyle, “the evolutionary record leaks like a sieve” (Hoyle, 77).
But Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admitted that “the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils” (Gould, 14). Indeed, the lack of evidence for Darwin’s theory has forced many contemporary evolutionists like Gould to resort to more speculative solutions such as “punctuated equilibria” whereby nature takes big leaps in relatively short periods of time.
Micro-evolution does not prove macro-evolution. All that Darwin successfully showed was that small changes occur within specific forms of life, not that there is any evolution between major types. Even granting long periods of time, there is no real evidence for major changes. To cite Gould again, “The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
- Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
- Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once, fully formed (Gould, ibid., 13-14).
The fossil evidence clearly gives a picture of mature, fully functional creatures suddenly appearing and staying very much the same. This is evidence of creation, not evolution.
In view of the great omissions in the fossil record, Darwin’s own statements are self-incriminating. He said, “he who believes that some ancient form was transformed suddenly … enter[s] into the realms of miracles, and leave[s] those of science” (cited by Denton, 59). As Howard Gruber put it, “Nature makes no jumps, but God does. Therefore, if we want to know whether something that interests us is of natural or supernatural [origin], we must ask: Did it arise gradually out of that which came before, or suddenly without any evident natural cause?” (cited ibid.). But clearly by Darwin’s own premises, then, macro-evolution does not follow, for he admits that there are great jumps in the fossil record, which are a sign of creation, not evolution.
Darwin dedicated a whole chapter of On the Origin of Species to what he called “a crowd of difficulties” (80). For example, “Gan we believe that natural selection could produce … an organ so wonderful as the eye” (ibid.). How could organisms that need it survive without it while it was evolving over thousand or millions of years? Indeed, most complex organs and organisms must have all of the parts functioning together at once from the beginning. Any gradual acquiring of them would be fatal to their functioning. Further, “can instincts be acquired and modified through natural selection?” (ibid.). Darwin admits the difficulties with evolution that “some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered” (ibid.).
Interestingly, Darwin himself acknowledged the misleading nature of analogy his view was based on. Elaborating of his oft quoted last words of the Origin that God created “one” or a “few” forms of life, Darwin admits two revealing things. First, he acknowledged some eight to ten created forms. He said, “I believe that animals are descended from at most four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number” (Darwin, Origin of Species, 241). Beyond this, he admitted that one can only argue by analogy, adding: “Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide” (ibid., emphasis added). This is a very revealing admission in view of the demonstrably false analogy used between artificial and natural selection.
Even some evolutionists admit that Darwin did not derive his theory from the study of nature but from a naturalistic worldview. George Grinnell wrote: “I have done a great deal of work on Darwin and can say with some assurance that Darwin also did not derive his theory from nature but rather superimposed a certain philosophical world-view on nature and then spent 20 years trying to gather facts to make it stick” (Grinnell, 44). This is particularly interesting in view of the fact that the Federal Court ruled in the “Scopes trial (McLean, 22 January 1982) that creation is not science because, for one thing, it has a non-scientific source—the Bible. The judge ruled that creation could not be taught alongside evolution because “‘creation science’ . . . has as its unmentioned reference the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis” (cited in Geisler, 173).
One cannot help but wonder why creation is not scientific because it has a nonscientific source, whereas Darwin’s view is. The truth is that a scientific theory does not need a scientific source but only some possible or actual scientific support. As the author pointed out in testimony at the “Scopes II” trial, many valid scientific views had nonscientific, even religious, sources. Nikola Tesla’s idea for the AC motor came from a vision while reading a pantheistic poet. And Kekule’s model of the benzene molecule was derived from a vision of a snake biting its tail (ibid., 116-17).
Sources
- Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
———, The Descent of Man
———, On the Origin of Species
- Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 3
- Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
- L. Geisler, The Creator in the Courtroom
- Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth
- J. Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” NH, 1972
- Grinnell, “Reexamination of the Foundations,” Pensee, May 1972
- Hodge, What Is Darwinism?
- Hoyle, et al., Evolution from Space
- Johnson, Darwin on Trial
———, Reason in the Balance
- Mayr, “Introduction,” C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1964 ed.
- Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies
- Peters, “Tautology in Evolution and Ecology.” AN, January-February 1976
(Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman L. Geisler)