Discovering Darwin's Designs (2)

So Bishop Ussher messed it up by stating that the world was created by God in 4000BC.

A crackpot idea.

It's easy to blame someone with hindsight, but his opinion was good enough for the science of the day. The fact the Ussher's dates were then printed in many bibles made them look "official"!

Which they never were! That made the problem worse.

So when this bloke came along, about 100 years after Ussher ...

... the aggro started getting a bit bitter and twisted. He was Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Born 1707, Died 1788.

What did he say?

He said a lot about a lot. He's famous for the "Buffon Needle Problem". If you have well over 10,000 needles and you drop them one-by-one onto a table marked out with straight lines, you can actually calculate pi.

Don't tell me needles have got something to do with the Bible

Absolutely nothing, but I thought you might be interested. Anyway, his particular claim to fame is that he said that the earth was about 75,000 years old, not 6,000. Because of this, he was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and his books were publicly burned.

Nice people these Christians!

Our next guest is this man:-

Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Born 1744, Died 1829 He suggested that animals changed; got more "clever" and complicated over many many years. Animals, he said, learn to adapt to their environment and this changes them permanently.

So Darwin wasn't the first to talk about evolution? Or the first to to upset he Christians?

Lamarck caused a real kerfuffle! Some Christians did not like it at all. It might suggest that God didn't create all living creatures. Blasphemy!

But, surely, things do change, don't they?

Of course they do, and it's daft to say they don't! It's always been daft to say they don't. Anyway, off goes Darwin on "The Beagle" and starts writing down what he sees.

I'll bet Darwin didn't look like that, even on the voyage.

But it was when he saw people and animals that were very different from those he recognised, that he started thinking. The picture is of a  resident of Tierra del Fuego; the bottommost tip of South America. And we've all heard of his time at the Galapagos Islands ...

Here he studied the animal life very carefully. It seemed that animals in the Galapagos Islands were similar to animals elsewhere; but in some ways different. He wanted to know 'Why?' and 'How?'

Something to do with finches?

So when he got home, he started thinking very hard indeed. For example, he looked at different shapes and sizes of birds.

Each of these finches has a slightly different beak, because, suggested Darwin, each of the varieties eats a different sort of food; so their beaks have changed. They have adapted to their particular needs.

So it's not looking good for the Bible and Creation.

That's what so many people think; but perhaps such people don't really know what the Bible actually says. We'll do a bit of hard thinking on Thursday!

Thinking? That's too hard!

When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and the stars, which you set in their places; what are human beings, that you think of them; mere mortals, that you care for them? Yet you made them inferior only to yourself.

 Next Bible Blog : Thursday 4th September