Just in time for the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” a team of Christian scientists has traveled back in time to the birthplace of evolution to “prove Darwin wrong.”
The scientists have embarked on a journey to the Galapagos Islands, the same island chain Darwin visited during the voyage of the HMS Beagle in 1835. Many scholars today agree that the animals and plants Darwin saw on those islands contributed greatly to his becoming an evolutionist.
Convinced that different species had evolved from common ancestors, Darwin began forming his theory of evolution within two years of the ship’s return to England in 1836. His 1859 book “On the Origin of Species” became the impetus for persuading many members of the scientific community to accept evolution in the 1860s.
But upon returning to the very spot Charles Darwin arrived 174 years ago, the Christian scientists have examined the same unusual creatures Darwin saw - and they’ve documented their findings in a 90-minute Vision Forum Ministries film titled, “The Mysterious Islands: A Surprising Journey to Darwin’s Eden.” The documentary was shot and directed by award-winning Jon and Andy Erwin of Erwin Brothers Motion Pictures.
Their mission: Determine whether the Galapagos Islands, resting above vast tectonic plates, are a laboratory for evolution as Darwin believed - or a truly magnificent showcase of God’s creation.
Charles Darwin goes to the Galapagos Islands
Doug Phillips, executive producer of the film, explained that prior to leaving on the HMS Beagle with Capt. Robert FitzRoy, Darwin had served as a student at seminary where he was studying to be a clergyman. Though he had no formal training in naturalism, Darwin took on the position of a naturalist on the five-year journey that would take him around the world and culminate in a visit to the Galapagos Archipelago.
The Galapagos Islands, located 600 miles off the coast of South America, contain some of the most exotic creatures and land formations found anywhere in the world.
Charles Darwin
“When he reached the Galapagos Islands, Darwin was already settled in his mind on a number of important issues,” Phillips told WND. “He had become very much a cynic and a skeptic of Christianity and the Bible. In his autobiography he specifically said that he viewed the Bible as a book of mythology that was closer to the history that would come from ‘barbarians’ than actual truth.”
By the time Darwin arrived at the Galapagos Islands, he had finished reading “Principles of Geology” by Charles Lyell and had learned to interpret the world through the lens of “millions” of years, Phillips said. Through the combination of Darwin’s distrust for the Bible and acceptance of Lyell’s concepts, Darwin sought a unified theory of origins that would explain where mankind originated, he argues.
“Darwin shot and collected more than 30 different types of birds, finches and mocking birds, although he didn’t know what they were at the time,” Phillips said. “He noted that the animals were very similar to the animals he found in South America, but they had some distinctions.”
Darwin began to question why the animals would look so similar to animals in South America and yet have such clear distinctions. He took notes on the variations.
“It wouldn’t be for about 25 years later that he took all his experiences from the Galapagos Islands and synthesized them with the help of men like Thomas Malthus, who was a population control theorist. With Malthus and the influences of others, he began to formulate a theory of evolution,” Phillips said. “His presuppositions had changed in a very atheistic, agnostic way, and he was looking for answers to try to come up with a theory that would explain life apart from Scripture and apart from Christian worldview.”
‘Everything from shells’
Phillips pointed out that Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, wrote a book titled “Zoönomia,” arguing that everything has evolved from lower life forms. Erasmus gave the Darwin family a motto translated as “Everything from shells.”
“So Darwin grew up believing in evolution,” Phillips said. “He didn’t come up with evolution. What made him special was that he was the first guy to give a mechanism for a unified theory of evolution in which all of life evolved from a simple-cell organism. And the mechanism he gave was this concept of natural selection, an idea that was sparked at the Galapagos Islands.”