I have already written several articles on this website about Charles Darwin regarding natural selection and his trip through the Galápagos Islands. There are links to these articles listed at the end of this article. What I am addressing in this article is what should the open-minded person think about Darwin as a person and as a scientist. Darwin died over 140 years ago and is still greatly admired by secular science. I would say he is in fact even venerated by many. This even though as I have written, natural selection has no scientific leg to stand on. The wife of one of my former pastors even told me that she admired Darwin for the science he did. This was after we had just spent several Bible study sessions studying the damage Darwin’s theories had done to the Church, to science, and to Western society!
Slide #1 is from a PowerPoint presentation that I did for the Design Science Association of Portland in May of 2024. The title of the talk was “Evolution’s 14 Greatest Frauds” where natural selection was discussed as the 14th fraud. The reason for this slide being in the slide show program was to describe Darwin’s responsibility for the acceptance of evolution by Western culture. Some Christians would like to diminish Darwin’s responsibility by bringing forth a list of excuses. They say he didn’t even want to publish his 1859 book The Origin of Species but was pressured by others to do so. He was just a tormented deist and not an atheist and was influenced by others to reject Jesus Christ. Darwin also had the excuse that he did not understand the true complexity of life and if he had he would never have written his books. Nor did Darwin really push natural selection much later in his life.
Slide #1
But the fact remains that he is revered today by academia and the media. No other 19th century naturalist is worshiped like he is. Is this justified? Slide #1 expresses my reasons for the conclusion I came to regarding his natural selection theory and the damage caused by it to society. All of this without even considering how much his writings influenced the current false concepts now in vogue concerning humans evolving from apes.
What about his science? I have found it to be somewhat suspect regarding his methods. I might even call his methodology something like “ghoulish science.” Darwin was a marksman and shot living things by the hundreds. I have the feeling that by the time of his death he had one way or another killed most every life form that he ever came across. Here follows a section out of one of the complete biographies of Darwin illustrating my point:
“His [Darwin’s] enthusiasm soon got the better of him. Boiling and measuring were now daily routines, and he became adept at judging the breeds and their young. His letters acquired a ghoulish air. I ‘am watching them outside,’ he said, eyeing his birds, ‘& then shall skeletonize them & watch their insides.’ It was not only pigeons. [W.D.] Fox showered him with dead ducklings and chicks, and volunteered mastiffs and turkeys. ‘Very much thanks for your offer,’ Darwin responded. ‘I have puppies of Bulldogs & Greyhound in salt. -& I have had Carthorse & Race Horse young colts carefully measured.’ Horses, dogs, ducklings— ‘I am getting out of my depth.’ He tried all means of killing his pigeons: chloroform took too long, and he squirmed at the sight. Better was potassium cyanide in a bottle; the prussic acid gas it gave off was quick and painless. But however swift, the death of his pigeons affected him; ‘I love them to that extent that I cannot bear to kill & skeletonize them, ‘he wailed to Hooker. Seeing his funny gawky chicks lose consciousness was always sad. ‘I have done the black deed & murdered an angelic little Fantail & Potter at 10 days old.’ The corpses mounted, skeletons, measured and unmeasured, lay everywhere; cadavers were arriving by post, boxes crushed and intestines hanging out. Even he admitted it was becoming ‘a chamber of horrors.’” [This quotation is from Desmond, Adrian et al, Darwin-The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, Warner Books, 1991, p. 427.]
Perhaps Darwin’s procedures could be somewhat forgiven considering the infancy of biological laboratory practices. However, I assume that his deistic non-Christian worldview would have supported most any actions that he felt were necessary to get his specimens. This worldview is just as it is today with the many (mad) scientists and physicians in the abortion business.
So, Darwin’s treatment of the life forms he studied were at least a bit gross. The more important point is that he rejected God’s Word and then came to a bunch of wrong conclusions about God’s creation. I wonder if Darwin had lived and died today if he would be buried as he is in Westminster Abbey next to creationist and devout Christian John Herschel, and not far from creationist and Biblical Christian Sir Isaac Newton? Who knows? Today we have in America an elected president who calls himself a devout Catholic and at the same time promotes the abortion of babies throughout their full term. I expect the two might have gotten along quite well if they had been contemporaries.
Herschel & Darwin Adjacent Tombstones at Westminster Abbey
J.D. Mitchell
Links to Related Articles:
What Evolutionists Say About Natural Selection
