Did Darwin Kill God Page #4

---

By the time of Darwin's

Origin of Species,

only a minority

of Anglican ministers believed

the earth was

as the Bible described it.

Those who were interested in geology

accepted geology as a science and

were not worried about the question,

"How old was the earth?" They simply

accepted that it must have been pretty old.

So people who believe

that the Bible

had a precise description of the earth, by

that time, belong almost to the lunatic fringe.

In November of 1859,

Victorian Britain was confronted

with the Origin of Species,

Charles Darwin's masterpiece.

All life on earth had evolved

over billions of years,

through variation and selection,

from a common ancestor.

And that included mankind.

WOLF HOWLS:

The story we have been told

is that this shattered Christianity,

wrecking the belief

that God created life in six days.

History tells us that this is

the moment that Darwin killed God.

But I find this strange, because,

as we have already discovered,

traditional Christianity had no reason

to be threatened by Darwin's ideas,

and Victorian Christians already had a

sophisticated understanding of the earth's formation.

So where did it all go wrong?

Something had happened to

Christianity in Victorian England.

Some Christians had broken away

from the traditional view

of God and creation.

It was a very English development,

confined to these islands,

and peculiar to Anglicanism.

Britain was in the midst

of the Industrial Revolution,

forging a brave new world

of design and engineering.

Into this society, a completely

new idea of God gained popularity,

presenting God as the great

mechanic, the ultimate designer.

Its leading proponent

was William Paley,

a theologian who compared the intricate nature

of life to the inner workings of a watch.

He argued that life was so complex, each

creature must have been individually designed.

TRAIN WHISTLES:

Darwin's evidence

blew this idea out of the water,

and caused outrage amongst those

who embraced this view.

How dare they be compared to apes?

It was these Christians who were shocked and

disgusted by the implications of Darwin's idea.

His theory did kill God -

but only Paley's God,

which was at odds with the teachings

of the founding Fathers of the Church.

As for Europe, Darwin's theory

made no theological fuss.

It was very much a storm

in an English teacup.

But even in Britain, there were plenty of

Christians who welcomed the idea of evolution.

Nine years after Darwin published, the

Roman-Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman said,

"Darwinism, true or not,

is not necessarily atheistic.

"On the contrary, it may be suggesting a

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes