Discovering Darwin's Designs (1)

So did Charles Darwin believe in God?

Actually, for most of his life he did; but he did begin to think that God might have, sort of, set the universe running and then sorting itself out and making itself better. He did stop believing in God when his daughter, Anne Elizabeth, died at the age of 10.

She is buried in the graveyard of Great Malvern Priory. Her dad had taken her there to drink the "healthy waters". He was heart-broken when it didn't work. 

That must have been tough for him. So it was then that Mr Darwin set out to prove the Bible was rubbish?

NO, NO and a thousand times, NO! He knew that his ideas would upset some people and he was saddened by that. But most Christians thought he was simply explaining how God created, not disproving it.

For Darwin, it all started with an invitation to take a trip on a boat.

HMS Beagle

Captain Robert Fitzroy's Second expedition

set sail 27th December 1831.

Returned to England 2nd October 1836

Its five year mission was to seek out new life and civilisations, to boldy go where no man had gone before.

The route of Darwin's voyage on "The Beagle"

[click on the image to enlarge]

Darwin's job was to keep a careful record of all that they saw on their epic journey. It was exactly what he saw that started him thinking about how animals change and where different species have come from.

So this is where all the arguments started?

Not really. We need to go about 200 years back in history. The problems probably began with this man.

James Ussher, Bishop of Armagh (in Ireland). Born 1581, Died 1656

Lived at the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I.

He was a real "brain box"!

He calculated the God had created the world in the night before 23rd October 4004 BC!

A bit out; if the 'big bang' happened over 13 billion years ago. What a wally!

That's unfair. Many great thinkers came up with similar dates; they simply added up the ages of the people mentioned in the Bible; and it all made sense. Well, it made sense to them.

The great Isaac Newton came up with a date of approx. 4000 BC. Remember, all science was pretty basic then.

The first paragraphs of Bishop Usshers book. This is a translation into English. Like most clever people of his day, he wrote in latin. Sometimes the letter "s" was printed to look like "f"; "firft" is "first" ; "funday" is "sunday"!

This is the same passage with modern English letters and spelling:-

In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, which beginning of time according to our chronology, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twentythird day of October in the year 4004.

Upon the first day, therefore, of the world, or October 23rd, being our Sunday, God, together with Highest Heaven, created the Angels.

Then having finished, as it were, the 'roof' of his 'building', he fell in hand with the foundation of this wonderful fabric of the world.

He fashioned this lowermost Globe, consisting of the deep; and of the earth; all the choirs of Angels singing together and magnifying his name.

And when the earth was void and without form, and darkness covered the deep. On the very middle of the first day LIGHT was created.

Everyone thought that his ideas were so good that they started printing his dates on the pages of the Bible; e.g. Noah entered the Ark in 2448BC as above from fbb's Family Bible. So everyone started believing that the Bish's dates were part of God's Holy Book. So they must be right. It would be blasphemy (like really bad swearing!) to think any other way. In fact they were simply the opinion of one man, not "holy" at all.

So it was the Bish who wrote that the earth was only about 6000 years old, and not 13.7 billion years?

That's right. So when people came up with different ages for the earth, some strict Bible experts started getting a bit shirty. We will think some more next week 'cos fbb and Mrs fbb are very busy with a Harvest Festival service and lunch on Sunday. Apologies.

 Next Bible Blog : Tuesday 2nd October