Was Darwin Right?

The famed naturalist Charles Darwin once wrote that, as a child, “I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods.”

This is a curious thing to admit, although children go through the stages of learning to lie and learning what the consequences of that are; it’s the human condition.

What makes Darwin’s admission very interesting, though, is the fact that he of course mainstreamed his great philosophy of naturalism, better known today as Evolution.

In fact, Darwin’s name is synonymous evolution, the belief that everything has descended from a common ancestor.

What a man did as a child can be overcome, but in Darwin’s case, there is evidence that this early bent toward making up stories propelled the publication and subsequent marketing (to use a modern word) of his famous book, On the Origin of Species.

(It was only later, in The Descent of Man, that he argued for man’s evolution from more primitive “hominids.” Thus was born the Apeman theory.)

Darwin knew that the complexity of the human eye was a problem for his theory. The precision of the eye, and the inability of modern science to duplicate it, is a strong case for Design.

Too, he knew that unless transitional creatures were found in the fossil record, his theory was in serious doubt. How could evolution be true if we didn’t find limitless numbers of jellyfish-becoming-seals, etc.?

The point is, Darwin and his friends like Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer did not like the God of the Bible. For various reasons, they found Him unappealing or even reprehensible. Darwin himself could not make sense of the reality of hell. He also famously said that any such view was a damnable doctrine, for it meant that his father, brother, and many friends ended up in a place of eternal misery.

But just because people don’t believe the Bible doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Do you see?

If you read the biographies and works of Huxley, Spencer, and other Darwin friends of 19th century England—as I have—you’ll see a curious common trait.

They simply decided they didn’t believe in God.

And it is equally fascinating to note how they influenced clergymen of their day, and our day. America preacher Henry Ward Beecher (perhaps the “Billy Graham” of his day) was quite the orator. He was also a devoted disciple of Darwin and in particular, Spencer. It was Herbert Spencer after all that coined the famous phrase, “Survival of the fittest.” This view of nature, that the strong had a legitimate, even logical, right to crush opponents, inarguably gave rise to 20th century madmen like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

What you believe is a big deal.

On this site, we will discuss this topic many times. We will point out that evolution—which at its core attempts to remove God from reality—is really just a belief system. It is not about hard, observable science, and never has been. Instead, a relatively small group of men in 18th and 19th century Europe so hated God, they decided to rid themselves of Him.

For now, I’d like you to simply begin considering that evolution is philosophy, not established science.

More to come.