The roots of evolutionist thought go back as far as antiquity as a
dogmatic belief attempting to deny the fact of creation. Most of the
pagan philosophers in ancient Greece defended the idea of evolution.
When we take a look at the history of philosophy we see that the idea
of evolution constitutes the backbone of many pagan philosophies.
However, it is not this ancient pagan philosophy, but faith in God
which has played a stimulating role in the birth and development of
modern science. Most of the people who pioneered modern science
believed in the existence of God; and while studying science, they
sought to discover the universe God has created and to perceive His
laws and the details in His creation. Astronomers such as Copernicus,
Keppler, and Galileo; the father of paleontology, Cuvier; the pioneer
of botany and zoology, Linnaeus; and Isaac Newton, who is referred to
as the "greatest scientist who ever lived", all studied science
believing not only in the existence of God but also that the whole
universe came into being as a result of His creation. 6 Albert
Einstein, considered to be the greatest genius of our age, was another
devout scientist who believed in God and stated thus; "I cannot
conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The
situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is
lame."7
One of the founders of modern physics, German physician Max Planck
said: "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of
any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of
science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality
which the scientist cannot dispense with."8
The theory of evolution is the outcome of the materialist philosophy
that surfaced with the reawakening of ancient materialistic
philosophies and became widespread in the 19th century. As we have
indicated before, materialism seeks to explain nature through purely
material factors. Since it denies creation right from the start, it
asserts that every thing, whether animate or inanimate, has appeared
without an act of creation but rather as a result of a coincidence
that then acquired a condition of order. The human mind however is so
structured as to comprehend the existence of an organising will
wherever it sees order. Materialistic philosophy, which is contrary to
this very basic characteristic of the human mind, produced "the theory
of evolution" in the middle of the 19th century.
Darwin’s Imagination
The person who put forward the theory of evolution the way it is
defended today, was an amateur English naturalist, Charles Robert
Darwin.
Darwin had never undergone a formal education in biology. He took only
an amateur interest in the subject of nature and living things. His
interest spurred him to voluntarily join an expedition on board a ship
named H.M.S. Beagle that set out from England in 1832 and travelled
around different regions of the world for five years. Young Darwin was
greatly impressed by various living species, especially by certain
finches that he saw in the Galapagos Islands. He thought that the
variations in their beaks were caused by their adaptation to their
habitat. With this idea in mind, he supposed that the origin of life
and species lay in the concept of "adaptation to the environment".
Darwin opposed the fact that God created different living species
separately, suggesting that they rather came from a common ancestor
and became differentiated from each other as a result of natural
conditions.
Darwin's hypothesis was not based on any scientific discovery or
experiment; in time however he turned it into a pretentious theory
with the support and encouragement he received from the famous
materialist biologists of his time. The idea was that the individuals
that adapted to the habitat in the best way transferred their
qualities to subsequent generations; these advantageous qualities
accumulated in time and transformed the individual into a species
totally different from its ancestors. (The origin of these
"advantageous qualities" was unknown at the time.) According to
Darwin, man was the most developed outcome of this imaginary
mechanism.
Darwin called this process "evolution by natural selection". He
thought he had found the "origin of species": the origin of one
species was another species. He published these views in his book
titled The Origin of Species, By Means of Natural Selection in 1859.
Darwin was well aware that his theory faced lots of problems. He
confessed these in his book in the chapter "Difficulties of the
Theory". These difficulties primarily consisted of the fossil record,
complex organs of living things that could not possibly be explained
by coincidence (e.g. the eye), and the instincts of living beings.
Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome by new
discoveries; yet this did not stop him from coming up with a number of
very inadequate explanations for some. The American physicist Lipson
made the following comment on the "difficulties" of Darwin:
On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less
sure himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled
"Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-
doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on
how the eye would have arisen. 9
While developing his theory, Darwin was impressed by many evolutionist
biologists preceding him, and primarily by the French biologist,
Lamarck. 10 According to Lamarck, living creatures passed the traits
they acquired during their lifetime from one generation to the next
and thus evolved. For instance, giraffes evolved from antelope-like
animals by extending their necks further and further from generation
to generation as they tried to reach higher and higher branches for
food. Darwin thus employed the thesis of "passing the acquired traits"
proposed by Lamarck as the factor that made living beings evolve.
But both Darwin and Lamarck were mistaken because in their day, life
could only be studied with very primitive technology and at a very
inadequate level. Scientific fields such as genetics and biochemistry
did not exist even in name. Their theories therefore had to depend
entirely on their powers of imagination.
Darwin's Racism
One of the most important yet least-known aspects of Darwin is his
racism: Darwin regarded white Europeans as more "advanced" than other
human races. While Darwin presumed that man evolved from ape-like
creatures, he surmised that some races developed more than others and
that the latter still bore simian features. In his book, The Descent
of Man, which he published after The Origin of Species, he boldly
commented on "the greater differences between men of distinct races".1
In his book, Darwin held blacks and Australian Aborigines to be equal
to gorillas and then inferred that these would be "done away with" by
the "civilised races" in time. He said:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the
civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace
the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the
anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break
between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will
intervene in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the
Caucasian, and some ape as low as baboon, instead of as now between
the negro or Australian and the gorilla.2
Darwin's nonsensical ideas were not only theorised, but also brought
into a position where they provided the most important "scientific
ground" for racism. Supposing that living beings evolved in the
struggle for life, Darwinism was even adapted to the social sciences,
and turned into a conception that came to be called "Social Darwinism.
Supposing that living beings evolved in the struggle for life,
Darwinism was even adapted to the social sciences, and turned into a
conception that came to be called "Social Darwinism".
Social Darwinism contends that existing human races are located at
different rungs of the "evolutionary ladder", that the European races
were the most "advanced" of all, and that many other races still bear
"simian" features.
1 Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said. London: Sphere Books,
1971, pp. 54-56
2 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed., New York: A.L. Burt
Co., 1874, p. 178
While the echoes of Darwin's book reverberated, an Austrian botanist
by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance in
1865. Not much heard of until the end of the century, Mendel's
discovery gained great importance in the early 1900s. This was the
birth of the science of genetics. Somewhat later, the structure of the
genes and the chromosomes was discovered. The discovery, in the 1950s,
of the structure of the DNA molecule that incorporates genetic
information threw the theory of evolution into a great crisis. The
reason was the incredible complexity of life and the invalidity of the
evolutionary mechanisms proposed by Darwin.
These developments ought to have resulted in Darwin's theory being
banished to the dustbin of history. However, it was not, because
certain circles insisted on revising, renewing, and elevating the
theory to a scientific platform. These efforts gain meaning only if we
realise that behind the theory lay ideological intentions rather than
scientific concerns.
6 Dan Graves, Science of Faith: Forty-Eight Biographies of Historic
Scientists and Their Christian Faith, Grand Rapids, MI, Kregel
Resources.
7 Science, Philosophy, And Religion: A Symposium, 1941, CH.13.
8 Max Planck, Where is Science Going?,
www.websophia.com/aphorisms/science.php..
9 H. S. Lipson, "A Physicist's View of Darwin's Theory", Evolution
Trends in Plants, Vol 2, No. 1, 1988, p. 6..
10 Although Darwin came up with the claim that his theory was totally
independent from that of Lamarck's, he gradually started to rely on
Lamarck's assertions. Especially the 6th and the last edition of The
Origin of Species is full of examples of Lamarck's "inheritance of
acquired traits". See Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said,
New York: Schocken Books, 1966, p. 64..
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