posted 12. September 2003 02:46                   

quote:

---

First, Behe openly criticizes Charles Darwin's views on the origin of life. In the fundamentalist and evangelical world, Darwin has been demonized because his theory of evolution threatens their literal interpretation of the early chapters in the Book of Genesis. Moreover, these Christians have misrepresented Darwin's views as being entirely dysteleological. That is, Darwinian evolution is interpreted as being an entirely chance or random process, a view of origins that no Christian can accept. Behe supports this interpretation in his paper by claiming that 'random variation' is the mechanism that drives Darwinian evolution. However, Behe and these Protestants are simply not familiar with the historical record. This atheistic view of evolution was never Darwin's position. Seven times in his famed On the Origin of Species 1859) he refers to a Creator in a positive and supportive context.(3) For example, Darwin asserts, "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes like those determining the birth and death of an individual."(4) Only a few years before his death,
Darwin admits that he "had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God."(5) More anon regarding Darwin's actual views.

---