Biological Evolution and Christian Faith

Philip S. Norman, M.D.

Biological evolution excites more disbelief among Christian faithful than the modern Big Bang creation story. The evolution idea ultimately bears on the origins of man, hence is much closer to home than the multibillion-year story of stars and galaxies seen mainly through monster telescopes. The Big Bang theory was developed over more than a century through the work of many; theorists, observers, scientists of many stripes. Evolution theory, on the other hand, burst on the world, fully formed, in an 1859 book by one man who put the work of a lifetime into an exhaustively reasoned volume.

Thus, Charles Darwin, English naturalist, gets credit for first putting forward the theory of evolution. Our ideas about evolution still bear his stamp, so his life and how he arrived at an idea that continues to dominate biology are worth a look.

Already fascinated by nature after a gentleman's education at Cambridge, Darwin in 1831 took a five-year voyage around the world as the naturalist on a British navy ship. The Beagle, it was called, stopped numerous places on both the East and West coast of South America, visited the Galapagos Islands, then New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Along the way Darwin observed nature, took 2,521 pages of notes and sent crates of preserved specimens back to England whenever he had a chance. These included fossilized skeletons of extinct animals, a few of them huge, never before seen in Europe. All in all, he collected 1529 species preserved in spirits and 3907 dried skins, bones and other specimens.

figure 1
Charles Darwin after the
voyage of the Beagle

Arriving home, he distributed many of his specimens to leading zoologists and botanists of the day for collaborative study. He wrote some 800 pages of his own "Journal" of the voyage and then published a whole series of papers and books, each one on a different aspect of his discoveries. These included geological observations that supported the notion that the earth was millions of years old. It took ten years to complete all the reports of his observations, but they established him as a leading geologist and naturalist.

Deadlines were never important to Darwin. He was well to do on inherited money, with no concerns about making a living. Public occasions gave him palpitations and upset his stomach, so he avoided giving lectures or attending meetings. A few years after marrying his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, they purchased a comfortable country house in Kent and, with a growing family, lived out their lives there. This is not to say that Darwin was a recluse. They visited family, friends, or spas a number of times a year, and hosted guests frequently, many of them Darwin's scientific friends. Darwin also carried on an extensive scientific correspondence, often asking friends to send specimens for study or requesting acquaintances to carry out animal or plant breeding experiments. The house contained an 18 x 18 study with bins and shelves for books, papers and specimens, a good North light and tables for dissecting and microscopy, finished up with a comfortable arm chair for thinking. Although he often felt unwell (what his medical condition was is still debated), he managed a number of hours every day studying specimens or writing in this room.

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