On this day in 1859, a biologist named Charles Darwin submitted the first three chapters of his infamous On The Origin of Species book to his publishers. The book formed the treatise for evolutionary biology and became the standard for many years.
Though brought up with a strict religious background, Darwin began to doubt all he had been taught while in Cambridge Divinity School. The deconstruction of Darwin’s beliefs is evident. It almost seems that he began as a theistic evolutionist before denying any Divine intervention in Creation. This is seen in corrections or explanations made in each new edition of the book.
Darwin’s house in England has been made a museum, and an exhibit has this statement concerning our Creator: “[E]very living creature looked the way it did because God had designed it that way. Darwin’s theory made nonsense of all of this.”1 This boils down the lasting legacy of Darwin. His theory and ideas, now taught as factual science, has made God and the Bible nonsense. Do we see the effects of this in society?
Ken Ham (Answers In Genesis president) writes, “This idea dominates America’s science classrooms. God has been outlawed there. “Science” is now defined as “naturalism” (really atheism) — it’s the only explanation for the origin of life currently allowed. Any hint of the supernatural is not permitted.
“The situation in public schools has only gotten worse in recent decades. If we continue to have generations of students going through a public education system that largely teaches them they are just animals and the result of natural processes (e.g., a Scientific American
article stated, “we are all animals, descendants of a vast lineage of replicators sprung from primordial pond scum”), we will continue to see a growing moral collapse in society.
“The horrible school shooting in Finland in 2007 is a prime example. The killer stated: “I am prepared to fight and die for my cause, … I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection. … I am just an animal, a human, an individual, a dissident. … It’s time to put natural selection & survival of the fittest back on tracks!”
“This student was only carrying out in practice what he had been taught concerning origins, as well as the lack of purpose and meaning he found in life.
“We should not be shocked when we see students only becoming more consistent in carrying out evolutionary beliefs. After all, they are acting out what they have been taught they are — animals.”
Ultimately, beliefs divergent of the Scripture calls into question the inerrancy of Scripture. It also leads to the debate about an old earth vs. a young earth.
At the Steadfast Apologetics and Evangelism National Conference held in October 2024, astrophysicist and progressive creationist Dr. Hugh Ross debated Biblical creationist and geophysicist Dr. Terry Mortenson. Ross believes that the earth is “4.5662 billion years old”2 and that God created the earth and all that is therein through “incremental (progressive) stages.”3 Mortenson takes the young-earth view, believing that God created the world about 6,000 years ago.
Listening to the debate, Ross’s points are strictly based on the “secular scientific interpretations of nature based on their naturalistic assumptions to reinterpret the Bible.”4 In other words, Ross is trying to make Darwin and the Bible compatible without using a single word of Scripture. Mortenson, on the other hand, used the chronology of the Bible to establish the young-earth position.
Creation is miraculous and divine, not scientific. Genesis 1:1-3 says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (2) And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (3) And God said, Let there be …” Six words are all anyone needs to know about creation: “And God said, Let there be…” It’s that simple. And it all finishes with these words:
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (1) Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (2) And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (3) And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (Genesis 1:31-2:3)
1https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/first-person-darwins-sad-legacy/
2https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2025/03/11/does-biblical-inerrancy-necessitate-young-earth/
3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Ross_(astrophysicist)
4https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2025/03/11/does-biblical-inerrancy-necessitate-young-earth/
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