The Christadelphian, January 1888, Robert Roberts

“Darwinism and the Bible”

It one of the many melancholy spectacles of the age in which we live, to find men (including numerous so-called “clergymen” and “ministers” and some Jews, alas), holding the Darwinian doctrine of evolution and yet professing to believe that the holding of that doctrine is not inconsistent with belief in God and acceptance of the Bible. A book has just appeared which ought to make them ashamed. It is “The Life of Darwin,” by his son. In this book are utterances of Darwin which show what he thought of the consequences to the Bible arising out of his theory of evolution. He says he “gradually came to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos!” The consequences of this to the claims of Christianity he felt to be fatal. “The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished—is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishna, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me utterly incredible. By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported—and that 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, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation . . . Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered(!) We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.”

Here is the true Darwin attitude to the Bible fully disclosed. It is part of Mr. Darwin’s honesty to state the matter thus frankly. It ought to open men’s eyes to the nature of the issue. It is not the Bible plus Darwinism, but the Bible versus Darwinism and what is Darwinism? The inferences of human frailty on a stupendous problem of nature which is not only open to another solution, but which, in many features of it, is absolutely inconsistent with the solution Mr. Darwin offers. Mr. Darwin has not answered the Duke of Argyle or Mr. Wilford Hall, who, following him hard through all his positions, demonstrate the inadmissibility of his theory. There is as much acumen—as much plausibility—as much force—(to put in the mildest way)—on one side as on the other. One is justified in going further and venturing to assert that the balance of facts and sound reasoning is decisively on the side of those students of nature who contend for the operation of a contriving will in her original constitution. In the scientific department it is therefore at the worst, what is called “a drawn game.” How then can the theory of evolution be claimed as a “discovery” which is to be set against arguments unanswerable apart from it? It is a preposterous claim which can only obtain the ready assent of those who are unacquainted with the facts except as Darwin presents them, or who are predisposed, as most men are, to accept his conclusions. Mr. Darwin’s conclusion that “the Old Testament is no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos” is being confuted every day by the signal confirmation of its historic details, many of which were doubted prior to the excavation of Babylon and Nineveh, and the decyphering of the Egyptian monuments. The mere reading of the book itself convinces the mind that Mr. Darwin’s proposition is an outrage upon manifest truths. He is right in binding Christ and the Old Testament together. They certainly stand and fall together. Which it is, there can be no manner of doubt with those who understand them. Mr. Darwin says, “the clearest evidence would be requisite” to justify belief in the miracle of Christianity. Certainly, and we have it. It would be interesting to know what would be clear evidence of events 1,800 years old, in the estimation of those who cannot see clear evidence in the testimony of eye-witnesses, supported by every collateral circumstance of the times, so far as disclosed in the contemporary literature of the first centuries. He says miracles are incredible in the presence of fixed law. No doubt they would be in the absence of evidence of their occurrence. But no man would say they are impossible in the abstract: and being in the abstract conceivably possible, it is a mere question of whether they happened, and of that, no man can get rid of the evidence. “The men at the time were credulous in a degree incomprehensible to us,” says he. Mr. Darwin was not alive at the time, and can only know by the evidence: and the evidence in the New Testament itself is that credulity in relation to Christ was not the temper of the times, but the reverse. Many of his disciples deserted him: a whole nation was unbelieving and crucified him; even among his own disciples, Thomas was a resolute sceptic; others doubted, and all of them “knew not the Scripture that he should rise from the dead.” The writings of the apostles, judging them apart from inspiration, are not the writings of indiscriminating enthusiasts. It is a singular and very common symptom of the weakness of the position of Mr. Darwin and unbelievers in general, that he takes refuge in the timid negation that “it cannot be proved that the gospels were written simultaneously with the events.” Can it be proved, Messrs. Darwin and Co., that they were written at a later date? Nay, gentlemen. Even Mr. Bradlaugh dares not take this position. He admits an authorship as far back as a.d. 150. He will not say the authorship was not earlier, but that “there is no evidence” of an earlier date. It depends upon what men consider evidence. If they insist upon an explicit official definitive declaration and attestation to publication on a particular date in the presence of witnesses, then it may be admitted there is an absence of evidence of this kind; but this is not what men consider evidence in other things. Evidence consists sometimes of a combination of general indications whose united force is irresistible. Consider the “evidence” with which Darwinists are content. The evidence of the contemporary authorship of the gospels is as complete as a subject so ancient admits of. Nay; it is absolutely complete when all its elements are taken into account. These are set forth methodically in the Trial; and also the reconciliation of the alleged inaccuracies of which unbelievers always make the most. Mr. Darwin, your theory is an ingenious speculation, and so far as you are concerned, an honest speculation; but it is a mistaken one, your scientific contemporaries being judges. The Bible is true, and God exists, and the universe is not the universal living grave of despair which your thoughts reduce it to.—Editor Christadelphian.