Many people are under the impression that Charles Darwin, the most well known promoter of evolutionism, died a Christian and renounced his theory. This is mainly due to rumors surrounding his death, and the fact that he studied at seminary as a young man and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Charles Darwin's thinking and writing on the subject of evolution and natural selection caused him to reject the evidence for God in nature and ultimately to renounce the Bible, God, and the Christian faith.
Darwin did not lack religious influences in his youth. Baptized an Anglican and steeped in his mother's Unitarianism, young Charles was brought up to pray. He used to run the mile or so from home to school, concerning which he wrote:
"I often had to run very quickly to be on time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided."
He had dropped out of medical studies after two years at Edinburgh, and his father suggested to him the calling of an Anglican clergyman. Charles wasn't sure whether he could accept everything in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. However, he later wrote:
"I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted."
During his three years of theological studies at Christ's College, Cambridge, he was greatly impressed by Paley's Evidences of Christianity and his Natural Theology (which argues for the existence of God from design). He recalled:
“I could have written out the whole of the 'Evidences' with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley,” and, “I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's 'Natural Theology.' I could almost formerly have said it by heart.”
In a letter of condolence to a bereaved friend at that time, he wrote of “so pure and holy a comfort as the Bible affords,” compared with “how useless the sympathy of all friends must appear.”
His intention to enter the ministry, he wrote, was never “formally given up, but died a natural death” when, on leaving Cambridge, he joined HMS Beagle as an unpaid naturalist. However, the religious influences in his life did not abate. His official position was that of gentleman companion to the captain, and for the next five years Darwin heard the Bible read and expounded on a regular basis.
Captain Robert FitzRoy was a deeply religious man who believed every word in the Bible and personally conducted divine service every Sunday, at which attendance by all on board was compulsory.
Darwin later recalled his own doctrinal orthodoxy when, in discussion with some of the officers, much to their amusement he quoted the Bible as “an unanswerable authority on some point of morality.” And at Buenos Aires, he and another officer requested a chaplain to administer the Lord's Supper to them before they ventured into the wilds of Tierra del Fuego.
Despite all of the above religious influences in his life, the decline of Darwin's faith began when he first started to doubt the truth of the first chapters of Genesis. This unwillingness to accept the Bible as meaning what it said probably started with and certainly was greatly influenced by his shipboard reading matter—the newly published first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (the second volume, published after the Beagle left England, was sent on to Darwin in Montevideo). This was a revolutionary book for that time. It subtly ridiculed belief in recent creation in favor of an old earth, and denied that Noah's Flood was world-wide; this, of course, was also a denial of divine judgment.
Based on James Hutton's dictum that all natural processes have continued as they were from the beginning (2 Peter 3:4), or 'uniformitarianism', Lyell's book presented Darwin with the time frame of vast geological ages needed to make his theory of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution 'work'. One of Darwin's biographers calls Charles's reading of this book his 'point of departure from orthodoxy'.
And when Lyell died in 1875, Darwin said:
“I never forget that almost everything which I have done in science I owe to the study of his great works.”
Inevitably, the more Darwin convinced himself that species had originated by chance and developed by a long course of gradual modification, the less he could accept not only the Genesis account of creation, but also the rest of the Old Testament as the divinely inspired Word of God. In his Autobiography, Darwin wrote:
“I had gradually come by this time, [i.e. 1836 to 1839] to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos or the beliefs of any barbarian.”
When Darwin came to write up the notes from his scientific investigations he faced a choice. He could interpret what he had seen either as evidence for the Genesis account of supernatural creation, or else as evidence for naturalism, consistent with Lyell's theory of long ages. In the event, he chose the latter—that everything in nature has come about through accidental, unguided purposelessness rather than as the result of divinely guided, meaningful intention, and, after several years, in 1859 his Origin of Species was the result.
On the way, in 1844, he wrote to his friend, Joseph Hooker:
“I am almost convinced... that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.”
Concerning this, Ian Taylor writes, "Many commentators have pointed out that the 'murder' he spoke of was in effect the murder of God."
Having abandoned the Old Testament, Darwin then renounced the Gospels. This loss of belief was based on several factors, including his rejection of miracles: "the more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become"; his rejection of the credibility of the Gospel writers: "the men of that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us"; his rejection of the Gospel chronology:
"the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events";
and his rejection of the Gospel events:
"they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses."
Summing up the above, he wrote:
“by such reflections as these... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.”
One major factor that contributed to Charles's apostasy is worth noting--the role model of his father, Robert, and of his grandfather, Erasmus. Both were ' freethinkers', so disbelief was an acceptable trait within the Darwin family--perceived not as 'a moral crisis or rebellion,' but perhaps even as 'a filial duty'. Indeed, in 1838, when Charles had become engaged to Emma Wedgwood, a very devout Unitarian, Robert had felt the need to advise his son to conceal his religious doubts from his wife--other households did not discuss such things.
Surrounded as he was by unbelievers, and having soaked his mind in literature that rejected the concept of divine judgment in earth's history, Charles mused:
“I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the 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.”
In 1880, in reply to a correspondent, Charles wrote:
“I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.”
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- shameful that one of the greatest european minds should be used in that way, shows how idiotic some of these people can be. 'Protocols' being a fake written by a priest may have something to do with those comments...
Originally Posted by Renwein
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