Page 95 - The Evolution Impasse 1

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Darwin, Charles Robert Darwin was highly influenced by the
different species he saw during the cour-
The first person to propose the the-
se of this voyage, and especially by the
ory of evolution in the form it’s accepted
different species of finches he observed
today was Charles Robert Darwin, an
on the Galapagos Islands. He concluded
amateur British naturalist.
that the differences in these birds’ beaks
Darwin never received any genuine
stemmed from their adaptation to their
training in biology and possessed only
surroundings. As a consequence of this
an amateur knowledge of nature and li-
idea, he assumed that the concept of en-
ving things. As a result of his interest he
vironmental adaptation lay at the heart
took his place as a volunteer on the dis-
of all the variety among living things.
covery vessel HMS Beagle, which sailed
Yet in making that assumption, Dar-
from Britain in 1832 and traveled thro-
win ignored the scientific facts, opposed
ugh various regions of the world over
the evidence that God created all living
the next five years.
species, and suggested that living things
were all descended from some com-
mon ancestor and became differentia-
ted from another due over time, due to
environmental conditions.
This hypothesis of Darwin’s was
based on no scientific facts or experi-
ments. However, with the support and
encouragement that he received from
eminent materialist biologists of the
time, Darwin gradually worked up
these hypotheses into a coherent the-
ory, according to which all living
things were descended from a single
primitive ancestor, but had been sub-
jected to minute changes over very
lengthy periods of time, and thus di-
verged anatomically from one another.
The ones that best adapted to their
surroundings passed their characteris-
tics on to subsequent generations, and
these beneficial changes thus accumu-
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