Many people are under the impression that Charles Darwin, the most well-known promoter of evolutionism, died a Christian and renounced his theory. This is mainly due to rumors surrounding his death, and the fact that he studied at a seminary as a young man and is buried in Westminster Abbey. This article intend to separate the fiction from the fact on this matter.
Charles Darwin thinking and writing on the subject of evolution and natural selection caused him to reject the evidence of God in nature, and ultimately to renounce the Bible, God, and the Christian faith. He was tragically a mistaken man who drifted from a childlike trust in One who helped him run to school on time into an abyss of hopelessness and agnosticism. While the spiritual journey of a Christian is a journey out of darkness into Christ's marvelous light, that of Charles Darwin was a slippery slide out of Gospel light into the sheer of blackness and darkness forever.
Surrounded as he was by unbelievers, and having soaked his mind in literature that rejected the concept of divine judgement in earth's history, Charles mused, "I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished . And this is a damnable doctrine."
In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, "I had gradually come by this time (1836-1839) to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus or the beliefs of any barbarian."
In 1880, in a reply to a correspondent, Charles wrote, " I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, and therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God."
Charles Darwin was a self-acknowledged agnostic who died at Down House on April 19, 1882, at the age of 73. To some it was deplorable that he should have departed an unbeliever, and in the years that followed several stories surfaced that Darwin had undergone a death-bed conversion and renounced evolution. These stories began to be included in sermons as early as May 1882.
Darwin's unbelief, like that of so many people today, had its roots in a mind which first rejected the revelation of God which God himself has given in nature. This religion of revelation, of the Bible, of the Lord Jesus Christ, will keep us tuned to truth, hope, and life in God, and away from evolutionism, humanism, and atheism, only as we allow it to exercise its power in our hearts. The tragedy of Charles Darwin is that he never did. He's a perfect example of a very intelligent man who just ended up with a wasted soul.
