in Great Britain there were numerous instigators in the Age of Enlightenment who had a
great influence. One of these was a man by the name of Erasmus Darwin. That name should be
familiar. He was Charles Darwin’s grandfather, who was born in 1731 and he died in 1802.
Erasmus Darwin was a medical doctor but he had some ideas on the subject of origins. He wrote
a book called, The Zoonomia, in which he laid out the idea that through time, life had progressed
from lower to higher.Erasmus Darwin was a religious man. He worshipped the gods Bacchus and Venus. And he seemed to have a personal agenda to attack biblical authority. Well, certainly he was not alone. In
fact, he was one of fourteen members who formed what was called the Lunar Society. The Lunar
Society met in Birmingham on the Monday closest to the full moon, which may give you some
insight into the spiritual interest that some of these men had. As I mentioned, Erasmus Darwin
himself worshipped Bacchus and Venus. He was interested in Eastern philosophy, Eastern
religion. The Lunar Society projected the concept that the biblical view of the origin of man was a
mythological concept and what we need to do is rely upon science in order to determine the truth.
It is interesting that Erasmus Darwin was one of the members of the Lunar Society, but so was
Josiah Wedgewood—Darwin’s grandfather on his mother’s side.
Then there was this individual who was very influential, named Charles Lyell. Charles Lyell
wrote The Principles of Geology that was published in 1830. And by the way, Charles Darwin
had this book with him when he went on his journey to the Galapagos. It was Charles Darwin,
along with James Hutton who formulated the geological chart we looked at earlier, in which they
proposed that the earth’s history was very, very old. And over hundreds of millions of years of
time, the layers of the earth were laid down gradually. And it was through these long periods of
time that life lived and died and was buried in these layers.
Most people are not aware that Lyell knew exactly what he was doing. He had an agenda that
was, as part of this whole era of the Age of Enlightenment, to cause people to doubt the
authenticity of the Bible—particularly the Genesis record. And that can be documented.
Charles Darwin once wrote regarding Lyell’s agenda,
Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the
Deluge far more efficiently by never having said a word against
the Bible than if he had acted otherwise… I have read lately
Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct
attacks on Christianity produce little permanent effect; real good
seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.
You see, Lyell’s objective was to cause people to question the Bible without attacking the Bible.
And the way that he could do that is to present this view that the layers of the earth were laid
down, not by any great global catastrophic event, but by gradual processes. The theory was called
the theory of uniformitarianism; that is, that the present is the key to understanding the past. And
that caused people to question what the Bible says about the creation that had been destroyed by a
worldwide flood.
You see, Darwin himself was then able to use Lyell’s timeframe to substantiate the years that
would be required for his idea of evolution to have occurred. And that is why reading Lyell’s
book on the way to the Galapagos Islands was very important in helping Darwin formulate his
ideas. Charles Darwin, of course, is often called the father of evolution; but certainly he is only
one of numerous contributors. As we look into his life—in fact as we read his own testimony of
some of the things that he said in the latter parts of his life—we can see that Darwin himself used
evolution as a means of explaining away God.
