Darwin and the Bible.

These words as I am sure you are aware are from Genesis, and as an Aunt of mine used to say the literature in the bible is wonderful so just a few lines….

001:001 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

001:003 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

001:004 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

001:005 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

001:006 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

001:007 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.


The new Yorker recently published a stimulating essay on Darwin about the quality of his writing and the huge gap between his travels on the Beagle the publishing of his great work. How in many ways he is the one great scientist who amateurs read for pleasure, his prose they said is beautifully constructed……

Sitting here in the naughts I look back and think about the impact that he has had upon our society, upon our belief system and how all the major religions have managed to survive, and yet how he managed to release such an earth shattering thesis, without been persecuted.

Gallileo espoused ideas which for us are far less threatening to the modern religions, but was persecuted. There is a play in London about his life. How he was tortured, and forced to make a public statement saying he renounced all his beliefs… his daughter watched him through the last years of his life Darwin never suffered this kind of persecution. I guess society was primed for his revelations, they were in the midst of the industrial revolution, and my feeling is if society hadn’t, Darwin perhaps wouldn’t have published… Darwin's impact has been greater, but the greater man was Galileo as he was alive in a more hostile environment.

The one thing that I find quite remarkable, is the Victorians left us with the idea that we could shape the planet and the environment to our will, that we are the ultimate masters. The positive attitude can be seen in journals such as the Economist, where anything is possible, man can truly over come anything. Through Darwin, though, they also left us with the idea, that ultimately there is one thing we can never truly over come and that is death. They eroded the belief for many in an after life… now that is ironic…

I can remember lying in my bed as a nine year old and thinking what came first…. Darwin, Hawkins, Newton, Einstein… they will never explain that… oh there was gas was there, and before the gas.. what?...... how can something come from nothing… no one will ever explain that… we may come within one milli second of the start of the universe they say and before that millisecond what? Somethings will never be explained… even a 9 year old can see that..