Happy Birthday, Darwin!

Throughout this month people around the world are celebrating the 200^th birthday of Charles Darwin. Darwin was one of the first people to popularize the idea that evolution by natural selection explains how life on earth began.

Natural selection is also known as “survival of the fittest.” If creatures have more offspring than the environment can support, the ones best suited for survival will live. Natural selection removes animals and plants that are not suited for survival in a particular habitat.

Darwin took this a step further and said that some creatures could undergo changes that would eventually turn them into a different species. Through natural selection, Darwin said, one type of animal could “evolve” into a different species, better suited to survive.

Creationists mostly agree that there is a certain amount of natural selection going on in the world today. If one species of moth that comes in both black and white varieties lives in a forest of dark trees, the black moths would be more likely to survive. The white moths would be seen easier and be caught and eaten. Eventually, it would appear that the moths had changed color to all be black, when really it was just that all the white moths died. But the moth is still a moth; it did not “evolve.”

Charles Darwin was an observant person who noticed many things about animals. But he was wrong when he thought that one kind of animal, through natural selection, could evolve into a totally different kind of animal. God made each animal to reproduce “after its kind” (Genesis 1). There is great variety in each kind of animal, but one kind never evolves into another. And animals don’t eventually evolve into humans. Humans were created by God in His image on Day Six of Creation Week.