The Victorians, the Bible and creation

The ideas and methods of Charles Darwin are intimately connected with the theological currents of the time he lived in. The theology comes first, and the theories on biology later.

Quotes and comments;

A. "The more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;—by such reflections as these … I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation." - Charles Darwin [1.]

- Darwin kept saying the world was not what we would expect if God really had created all the creatures. There can be little doubt he brought this same method of doubt to the Bible. It wasn't what he expected, wasn't what he thought it should be... and so he rejected it. He's often painted as a humble man, when he was nothing of the sort. The man overflowed with arrogance; toward both the Creator and the created world.

(I don't have Darwin's confidence, and don't think we can know (a priori) what to expect from God's word, or from the natural world. If we critique God and creation with our own expectations we're doomed to throw out the truth for the sake of delusions.)

The materialists and deists of Darwin's era attacked the bible with the same diligence and fervor they attacked all ideas of creation. They were out not to discover truth but to destroy truth. The mocked and ridiculed, and held these truths up to whimsical standards and zealous complaint. As they looked for evils in the natural world, so they combed the bible to find evils there. They made collections of their discoveries, and claimed these had disproved the idea of a good god and a good creation... claimed they had disproved the bible and disproved creation.

They employed certain methods on the 'data' in both cases. To deny the flood they used a method of Uniformitariansim; the method itself made the flood (and biblical geology) impossible. With the bible they used the method of naturalism; thus making all miracles impossible. In neither case did they discover that biblical geology was wrong, or that the miracles didn't happen... they merely defined them out of existence. (And called it science.)

In my opinion, Darwinism is about as scientific as naturalism or higher criticism. It's basically higher criticism applied to the world of living forms. It uses similar methods, and has a similar spirit. It holds God up to human standards. (e.g. it doesn't allow the supernatural.... at least in the sense of not allowing any direct influence of God upon the world.) And so, just as the bible wasn't written by the hand of God, neither were the animals created by the hand of God. The bible rather was the cobbled together words of mystics, politicians and liars; no more true than any London newspaper. And so the animals in the world were not created by god but had been fashioned together by random chance events; each animal being a cobbled collection of spare parts and available bits and bobs.

Both the bible and the average animal were full of obvious mistakes and failures. Both the bible and the natural world were full of evil things; parasites and demons, waste and genocide, harsh and brutal laws, prodigies and visions. Both the bible and the natural world were held up to perfectionist standards; standards created by sanctimonious, Victorians who imagined they sat aloft the pinnacle of the human race and human progress. They looked down on Pygmies and Australians, and they looked down on God. They looked down on odd and maladapted nature, and they looked down on the bible. They knew the way things should be if there had been a God, and they saw no sign of his existence; not in the world, and not in the bible.

With this background it can be seen why Charles Darwin was such a great success. He rode the spirit of the times as if it were lodged in his own stable.

Notes;
1. 'Concerning ‘the miracles with which Christianity is supported’, he wrote,
‘[T]he more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;—by such reflections as these … I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.’ [The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, (with original omissions restored, edited with appendix and notes by his grand-daughter Nora Barlow), Collins, London, ‘Religious Belief’, pp. 85–96, 1958.]
- Taken from article at creation.com 'Darwin’s arguments against God' by Russell Grigg
2. ‘I can indeed 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.’ - Charles Darwin [see above]
- In other words, the Bible and Christianity couldn't be true, because he didn't like them; didn't like what they said.
3. People interested in further study on this subject might read 'Darwin's God' and 'Darwin's Proof' by Cornelius Hunter. (I especially recommend the first.)