The evolution of Darwinism

February 12 2009 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and April the 150th anniversary of the completion of his manuscript entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (hereafter referred to as Origin). Few books have had such an influence on people, education and parliamentary laws during the past 150 years. The sanctity of the life of the unborn child has been eroded, together with loss of the importance of traditional family structure and sexual morality.

Darwin was essentially a deist, believing in an impersonal God who created the earth, giving a spark of life to some primitive life form, and then left everything to evolve without any divine aid or direction. His ideas were not truly original, but were a system inherited from the classical Greek and Roman philosophers, as outlined below.

Classical Greek philosophy

Anaximander (c. 610-546 BC) traced the origin of man back to the transition period between the water and land stages of the development of the earth. He was the first to recognise fossils as the remains of animals once alive, and to see in them proof that once the seas covered the entire surface of the earth (Newman, 1921). His pupil was Xenophanes (576-480 BC) who argued, on the basis of fossil shells on mountains, that land animals had evolved from marine animals. He maintained that there was only one god — namely, the world. This god was also one intelligent, incorporeal, eternal being, yet spherical in form and of the same nature with the universe, comprehending all things within himself, bearing no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind.

Plato, Aristotle & Epicurus

Plato (428-348 BC) introduced the concept of the demiurge in Timaeus (c. 360 BC), a work speculating on the nature of the physical world, which he considered a living thing with body and soul (ReligionFacts). This demiurge was considered to be a ‘good’ creator deity, an impersonal ‘prime mover’ later personified as Zeus. He was surpassed in importance by his pupil Aristotle (384-322 BC), who believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man, the scala naturae, the Ladder of Life or Great Chain of Being (Mayr, 1982). This was to reappear in a more complex form in Darwin’s Tree of Life.

A century and a half later, Epicurus (c. 341Ðc. 270 BC) declared that only matter was real, pleasure is the sole intrinsic good, and there is no divine intervention. These vain ideas bubble up again during the 18th and 19th centuries, as we will see.

Classical Roman philosophy

200 years later, Lucretius (c. 96-53 BC), wrote in De Rerum Natura: ‘The earth, which generated every living species and once brought forth from its womb the bodies of huge beasts, has now scarcely strength to generate animalcules. For I assume that the races of mortal creatures were not let down into the fields from heaven by a golden cord, nor generated from the sea or the rock-bearing surf, but born of the same earth that now provides their nurture…’ Lucretius’s philosophy denied life after death and any divinity concerned with man’s welfare. He held to a kind of spontaneous generation of species, but the main result is that God is left out of the reckoning.

Gentile philosophy

The classical philosophers came to their conclusions respecting origins using natural reasoning apart from divine revelation, being ‘foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world’ (Ephesians 2.12). The Jewish writings would have been considered lacking in academic respectability (1 Corinthians 1.22). Anyone with access to the Scriptures, especially the printed Bible, cannot plead ignorance of God’s revelation of the origins of life.

New Testament times

The ‘science falsely so called’ or ‘what is falsely called knowledge’ of 1 Timothy 6.20 ‘probably refers to a latent Gnosticism (science = gnosis) which was more clearly apparent by the time of John’s letters, and drew on many elements of Platonism. Gnost-icism was fundamentally nothing but evolutionary pantheism, overlain with a complex of spiritistic revelations (Morris, 1990). Matthew Henry comments on this verse: ‘Some who have been very proud of their learning, their science, which is falsely so called, have by that been debauched in their principles and been drawn away from the faith of Christ, which is a good reason why we should keep to the plain word of the gospel, and resolve to live and die by that’ (Eword).

Augustine and Aquinas

Augustine (353-430 AD) imagined a progressive development in creation: ‘For all these things were created at the beginning … but they await the proper opportunity for their appearance’, i.e. theistic evolution, which showed the influence of Plato. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) believed in the divine origin of the Scriptures but sought to allegorise Genesis to fit in with the Greek pantheistic philosophy of Aristotle. He thus put the ‘light of reason’ on a par with ‘the light of grace’. Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642) both believed the Bible, but their heliocentric system had to overcome Aristotelianism before it could be accepted.

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)

Erasmus, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, suggested: ‘Perhaps all the products of nature are in their progress to greater perfection …consonant to the dignity of the Creator of all things’ (Darwin, Erasmus, 1789). In fact, Erasmus anticipated his grandson on almost every point of evolutionary theory apart from natural selection, seen especially in his book Zoonomia, published in 1794. Again: ‘Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind … all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!’

Erasmus Darwin’s final long poem, The Temple of Nature, originally titled The Origin of Society, was published posthumously in 1803 and centres on his newly-conceived theory of evolution. It traces the progression of life from microorganisms to civilised society.

In the year Erasmus Darwin died, it was reported to Wilberforce that only one in 20 of the pupils from Dodderidge’s academies had not become Socinian, i.e. Unitarian or deists. The Great Awakening enlightened the poor miners of Bristol, but seems generally to have bypassed the intellectuals — God had ‘hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children’ (Matthew 11.25).

Charles Robert Darwin

Studying theology at Christ’s College, Cambridge, Darwin (1809Ð1882) was greatly impressed by Paley’s Evidences of Christianity and his Natural Theology (which argues for the existence of God from design). By 1880, he confessed to a correspondent, ‘I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, and therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God’ (Brentnall & Grigg, 2002). He had become an agnostic, more in the tradition of classical pagan philosophy than biblical Christianity.

Tree of Life

His Origin largely ignored the Bible and, although not wishing to offend the more orthodox Anglicans, Darwin’s conclusion could not be avoided that mankind had descended from apes or ape-like creatures. The Origin of Species contains just one diagram, the Tree of Life, which had its origins in Aristotle. This simply shows the upper branches and twigs, apparently demonstrating how natural adaptation leads to a variety of species developing out of a genus. Darwin’s diagram does not show the relationship between man and the lower animals, but the text fills us in with his ideas, as described later.

Taxonomy

Taxonomy, the practice and science of classification, is a complicated subject, with Linnaean taxonomy, evolutionary taxonomy and its recent offshoot, cladistics. There are many subdivisions, and a continual revision of classifications with emerging DNA evidence.

Adam, the first taxonomist

The Bible records God’s bringing to Adam all the terrestrial animals and birds (Genesis 2.19) so he could observe and name them. Adam would also have learnt something about himself. During his life, he would have perceived patterns among the animals; for example, how some creatures had scales and others hair or feathers. He also learnt about God-the-Designer, and how the creation was an expression of the Lord’s handiwork (Frair, 2000). As he observed them he may even have classified them into groups, but that is a far cry from saying one group had evolved out of another.

Modern taxonomy

In broad terms, according to current classification, botany deals with the plant kingdom, and zoology with the animal kingdom. The latter is divided into phyla, one of which is the Chordata, or backboned animals. This is divided into the following classes: Aves (birds), Mammalia (mammals) and Sauropsida (reptiles). Then within the Mammalia, for example, there are many different orders, e.g. the Carnivora and, within this order, many families, such as the Canidae, or dogs and related animals totalling 37 species in ten genera. In the Canis genus there is the Grey wolf species, Canis lupus, a subspecies of which is the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris. Another order is the Primates, one family of which is the Hominidae, including humans, also chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Thus with man, Homo sapiens, the genus Homo refers to a subdivision of the family and the species sapiens to a subdivision of genus.

We now turn to a biblical approach with some criticisms and conclusions.

Genesis ‘kinds’

In the Bible (Genesis 1.11,12,21,24, 25), God created animals and plants after their own kind. But man was special, and made in the image of God (vv. 26-27). The opinion among creationists today is that these kinds overall represent higher taxonomic groups such as the family, and that God created an inbuilt capacity for variation within a kind but not between kinds.

Baraminology

Baraminology is one creationist approach to the study of biblical ‘kinds’. The term is derived from the Hebrew words bara, which means ‘to create’, and min, which means ‘kind’. This field of study shows, for example, that the many dog species that we find throughout the world today — including the coyote, the wolf, the fox, the border collie, and the jackal — may all descend from one original ‘kind’, created by God on day six of creation week. Creationists may, therefore, envision an ‘orchard’ of ‘kinds’ rather than a single ‘tree’, with variations in each ‘kind’ appearing as branches and twigs (Wood, 2007). Besides trees, networks or lattices could be more appropriate (Cavanaugh, 1999-2000).

Darwin’s comments on the Tree of Life

Darwin proposed that 10,000 successive generations could lead to the emergence of two new species. ‘Thus, as I believe, species are multiplied and genera are formed’. He later wildly guessed: ‘In the diagram, each horizontal line has hitherto been supposed to represent a thousand generations, but each may represent a million or hundred million generations …’ But Darwin goes beyond the emergence of new genera: ‘The two little groups of genera will form two distinct families, or even orders, according to the amount of divergent modification supposed to be represented in the diagram’. No definite examples proving these theories seem to be provided.

The fruit fly speaks out

It has been said that ‘out of 400 mutations that have been provided by Drosophila melanogaster [the fruit fly], there is not one that can be called a new species. It does not seem, therefore, that the central problem of evolution can be solved by mutations’ (Caullery, 1964). Generally they were also weakened in one way or another compared to wild flies, though often mutations do not produce observable effects. Also, in spite of all the amazing variations obtained by breeding animals such as dogs, they all remain true dogs.

Concluding his Origin, and without any experimental proof, Darwin claims: ‘Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator’ (p.484). He concludes: ‘There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved’ (Origin, p.490).

Scoffers

We are warned in 2 Peter 3.3-4 of scoffers who will come in the last days, claiming that all things are continuing as they have done since the beginning of Creation. On the title page, Darwin despises Scripture by citing the following quotation: ‘But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this — we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws’ (Whewell, 1833). Creationists do allow, however, that a diversity through genetic variations will occur ‘naturally’ and species become extinct in challenging environments like an ice age, but all under the umbrella of God’s providence.

Darwin’s critics

Darwin had his critics, and in Chapter 6 of his Origin he attempts to answer their anticipated objections.

Absence of living transitional forms

He writes: ‘Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?’ Also, where is all the multitude of transitional forms in the fossil record? He argues that with land forms and climate now in a relatively steady state, previous transitional forms will have been exterminated, and present species are ‘tolerably well-defined’. He is therefore claiming that his scheme of evolution would only work during a sequence of catastrophes, and that any evidence for it would necessarily be destroyed in the process. Darwin is asking us to believe a theory which is incapable of being proven by the study of living things.

Absence of fossil transitional forms

In Chapter 9, p.288, Darwin discusses the lack of palaeontological evidence for his theory in the fossil record. He proceeds to show that, on the basis of contemporary rates of deposition of sediment from rivers or by erosion, the periods of time needed to produce the various geological strata are several hundred million years. Darwin is ignoring the effect of global or local flooding in arriving at this time scale, which can achieve in days a depth of sediment normally requiring millennia. Though it did not involve flooding, this was demonstrated during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens (Washington, USA) on May 18 1980. On June 12 1980, a 25-foot (7.6 m) thick stratified pyroclastic layer accumulated within a few hours below the Mt. St. Helens volcano, resembling the strata of the Grand Canyon sequence (Answers in Genesis). The large timescale represented by the thickness of sedimentary strata, which Darwin requires for his evolutionary scheme, must therefore be considerably reduced, especially if we accept the effect of Noah’s flood.

He tries to explain the lack of fossils of intermediary forms as follows: ‘During subsidence, though there will be much extinction, fewer new varieties or species will be formed; and it is during these very periods of subsidence, that our great deposits rich in fossils have been accumulated. Nature may almost be said to have guarded against the frequent discovery of her transitional or linking forms.’ In other words, Darwin is claiming that you won’t find any evidence for his wonderful theory in the fossil remains of dead animals either! If the subsidence of the land mass is relatively rapid, surely the fossils would produce a snapshot of the flora and fauna extant up to the time of inundation. If, on the other hand, the subsidence occurred more slowly, then surely this period of stress would produce the emergence of those fitter adaptations which are lacking during steady state periods. Either way one would expect some evidence of transitional forms if Darwinian macroevolution was occurring.

Conclusion

The unbeliever attempts to give meaning to what he sees around him without allowing for a personal God to whom he would be answerable. He has invented a fictitious scheme whereby man has evolved in a series of stages from the simplest of life forms. Darwin’s ‘Creator’ has now disappeared, and we have chemical evolution. A primeval soup produced amino acids, and we are expected to believe that these somehow combined to produce complex proteins, DNA and life. And, before that, the entire universe came from a Big Bang!

None of these theories are even true science. The scientific method of inductive reasoning involves collecting a mass of evidence from experimental observations designed to test a hypothesis. Over time, these would crystallise into theories and laws. With origins, or creation, this method fails because it is impossible to recreate the original conditions, or make observations over the long time scales proposed. No one was present at the Creation, so we just have to rely on God’s revelation — the alternative is to have faith in unprovable hypotheses. ‘By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible’ (Hebrews 11.3).

Let God have the final word: ‘Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand’ (Job 38.2-4).

References and sources

Answers in Genesis, at http://www.answersingenesis.org/TJ/v11/i2/nature.asp
Brentnall, John M. and Grigg, Russell M. (2002) Was Darwin a Christian? Quoted in http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html
Caullery, Maurice, (1964), Genetics and Heredity, p.119, in Fruit Flies Speak Up, the Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia at http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/10mut10.htm#No%20New%20Species
Cavanaugh, David P. (1999-2000) personal communications quoted in http://www.christiananswers.net/q-crs/baraminology.html
Darwin, Charles, (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, downloadable at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22764/22764-h/22764-h.htm
Darwin, Erasmus, (1789) In notes to his poem The Loves of the Plants (under Curcuma.1.65), that appeared anonymously
Eword: http://eword.gospelcom.net/comments/1timothy/mh/1timothy6.htm
Frair, Wayne, (2000), Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp.82-91, viewed at http://www.christiananswers.net/q-crs/baraminology.html
Henry, Matthew, Bible Commentary, at http://eword.gospelcom.net/comments/1timothy/mh/1timothy6.htm
Mayr, Ernst, (1982), The Growth of Biological Thought, pp.201-202; also: Lovejoy, Arthur O., (1936), The Great Chain of Being, Harvard
Morris, Henry M., The Long War Against God, Baker Book House Co., 2nd printing, 1990, ISBN 0-8010-6257-8
Newman, Horatio H., Readings in Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics, 12, University of Chicago Press, 1921
Whewell, William, 3rd Bridgewater Treatise, Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology (1833)
Wilberforce, W., Diary, January 1802, in Life of William Wilberforce, Wilberforce, Robert I. & S., 2nd ed., 1839
Wood, Todd C. (2007) Two of Every Kind, in http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/two-of-every-kind

Second of two articles in a special Darwin supplement