“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth… And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it… and it was so.” —Genesis 1:1,26-28,30
The Birth of Charles Darwin — February 12, 1809
veryone recognizes the face—long white beard, intense look in his eyes, almost the prototype of a Hollywood wizard. He adorns the cover of books and stares down at you from museums. His name is evoked in debates, academic papers, and the pulpits of churches in our land. He is the high priest of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, whose birthday on February 12 marks the beginning of a life that would change the world.
Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth,
Surge over surge, involv’d the shoreless earth;
Nurs’d by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves.
(From The Temple of Nature, by Erasmus Darwin)
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
‘On the Origin of the Species’
He did not suddenly appear on the scene like some hirsute scientific Venus emerging from a sea-shell. Darwin came from a distinguished family, already well-known because of his corpulent physician-grandfather Erasmus’s naturalistic theories, poetry, and enlightenment intellectualism, as well as his mother’s father Josiah Wedgewood, founder of the famous pottery art, inventor of modern marketing and a religious skeptic. Charles inherited a name, intellectual curiosity, and money to travel the world. After joining a five-year expedition to the Pacific Ocean aboard the HMS Beagle to the Galápagos Islands, Charles found his métier as a naturalist writer and theorist, eventually publishing On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, a book purporting to explain a general theory of how all species evolved from simpler forms over long periods of time via natural selection.
The HMS Beagle
The Galápagos Islands
“Enlightenment Rationalism”
His “theory of evolution” provided for many in the scientific community, an apparent explanation of the origins of all things, by which they could finally discard the biblical explanations of how the world came into existence. Darwin’s theories provided secularists with an intellectual home, having already abandoned the possibility of divine revelation and embraced “enlightenment rationalism.” His theories took years to develop as he travelled in “scientific” circles and was lionized for his observations, and all the books he wrote became best-sellers. Upon his death in 1882, Charles Darwin was buried at Westminster among the greatest men of all Britain’s history.
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Published in 1859
Darwin’s Genie Reaches Full Power
Having cut the anchor of biblical truth regarding origins, social scientists applied Darwin’s evolutionary theories to business, social order and various plots to re-engineer society. Eugenicists believed they could now rid the human race of unwanted imperfections of race and deformity. Industrialists used evolutionary theory to explain the elimination of competition in a survival of the fittest, pragmatic world where nature is “red in tooth and claw”* and the weaker are killed off. In Nazi Germany, political and cultural hegemony became the natural goal of a superior civilization. Darwin’s genie reached full powers in the two world wars of the 20th Century and still holds sway among most scientists, school teachers, politicians, historians and churchmen today. Little could Darwin have envisioned the results of abandoning the Christian revelation and centuries of biblical truth for his half-baked observation of obscure birds from islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
Addressing the men of the Reichstag, declaring war on the United States
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)
Proponent of the eugenics movement and founder of Planned Parenthood
Image Credits: 1 Charles Darwin, 1881 (Wikipedia.org); 2 Erasmus Darwin (Wikipedia.org); 3 HMS Beagle (Wikipedia.org); 4 Galápagos Islands (Wikipedia.org); 5 Origin of the Species title page (Wikipedia.org); 6 Adolf Hitler (Wikipedia.org); 7 Margaret Sanger (Wikipedia.org)
