Scientific Beginnings of Evolution
Not everyone took biblical creation stories literally. By the 18th century, it was clear that certain observations didn’t fit very well into Genesis. Extinction, documented by George Cuvier, and the great age of the earth, documented by Charles Lyell, were just two of the pieces of the puzzle that began to come together before Darwin’s time. When Darwin set out on his voyage as ship’s naturalist on HMS Beagle in 1831 he was a run-of-the mill natural theologian. When he returned, he had been transformed into a nascent evolutionist. In addition to absorbing Lyell, Darwin had made his own observations on biogeography, fossils, geology, and adaptation that led him to dismiss biblical creation stories and search for a natural explanation for what he saw. Darwin collected data and sharpened his arguments for 20 years and in 1859 published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. In that book, Darwin argued two things: that organisms are descended with modification from common ancestors (“ a few forms or …. one”) and that natural selection acting on chance variation gives rise to the adaptations we see in organisms. This was a lawful, not biblical, view of nature, and put biology squarely on par with chemistry and physics. Darwin scrupulously avoided any mention of human descent, coyly stating that “(l)ight will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”. Later, Darwin did try to shine some light on human evolution, publishing The Descent of Man in 1871. Thomas Huxley joined him with his own work, Man’s Place in Nature. For many people, treating humans like any other animal was simply too much. After all, weren’t we made in the image of God?
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