(More of Alex Caldon's writing can be found in the book The Quest For Truth: On Finding The Grail, which is available from www.thequestfortruth.co.uk.  Some people may be eligible for a FREE copy.  Happy Questing! )

Charles Darwin’s genius provides another good illustration of the persecution of truth. 

Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, but he had held the work back for about twenty years, because he knew that by clearly demonstrating the creationist theory to be incorrect he would turn the world upside down.  As a Christian himself, he agonised over the correct course of action.  What should he do, adhere to the truth or maintain a religious delusion?  In his autobiography he was fully aware of the likely reaction to his work; he said he delayed publication because he was “anxious to avoid prejudice.”  Darwin had witnessed the persecution of other great scientists who had exposed truth.  He observed how Leibnitz had attacked Newton for his theory of gravitational attraction, damning it as “subversive of natural...religion.”  Leibnitz saw Newton’s laws as heretical:  Darwin did not.  Similarly he saw no threat to religion from his theory of evolution, but he did fear the backlash.

Eventually he did publish of course, and the subsequent rejection of the truth of evolution was massive.  If we attempt to empathise with Darwin, we can see that it must have been a mind blowing experience for him to have the world so utterly outraged by his own writings.  He was ridiculed in the press; there were cartoons published which showed him as half human, half ape (shown below).  But all he had done was to report on what he saw before him.  The course of events after publishing followed a common pattern:  the egos of the creationists were dented by the truth, and they started to slip down the ladder of social esteem.  They had been made to look foolish, and the survival trait inside their genetic code (the part of them which wanted to appear desirable to the opposite sex, in order to pass on their genes), that part of them was threatened by Darwin’s work.  The creationists looked foolish and un-sexy; there was a risk that they would not be able to pass their genes on, so they tried to distort people’s perceptions – they turned the tables and proliferated falsehoods to make Darwin look like the fool.  They attacked the truth.  They chose not to grow.  Ironically, it was their genetically programmed survival instinct which generated their rejection of truth.  Of course, the creationists were blissfully unaware that they were persecuting the truth; they were unaware of the primeval urges going inside their DNA, as DNA was yet to be discovered.  Christ summed this situation up well when he said “Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do.”

But eventually the truth of evolution ploughed unstoppably through the madness, and its truth remains unchallenged today.  Well not entirely unchallenged.  In fact there are many people who still deny that evolution is real, in spite of mountains of evidence.  Mountains built from geological records and fossils which clearly show the process of evolution occurring over many millions of years.

It is ironic that the creationists do not just attack the truth, but they are in effect attacking the God which they say they worship.  Christ said “I am the Truth”; Gandhi also said "Truth is God”.  Both these courageous men identified God with the concept of Truth.  God may be seen by us as What Is There, or in fact God can be seen as the Universe.  By making accurate observations, and drawing a logical conclusion, Darwin was not moving away from God, he was moving closer!  When he recorded his scientific observations of evolution he was in fact recording the word of God!  Evolution is, so far as we can tell from the evidence, true.  Evolution is a miracle brought about by God.  It is not blasphemous to believe in evolution; indeed if there is such a thing as blasphemy (which there probably isn’t), then it would be blasphemous to deny it!

"Spiritual maturity is a lifelong process of replacing lies with truth." Kurt Bruner