The following is excerpted from Seeing the Non-Existent: Evolution’s Myths and Hoaxes, a free 640 page eBook available at www.wayoflife.org.

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Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) was called “Darwin’s Bulldog” because he was the premier public defender of Darwinian evolution in Darwin’s day. Whereas Charles Darwin was reclusive and mild tempered, Huxley was combative and loved the limelight. “Never one to enter the public fray, Darwin needed a champion as Huxley needed a cause” (Adrian Desmond, Huxley, p. 260).

Huxley’s biographer says he lived in a “fantasy world” as a child, “escaping into a secret realm of science” (Desmond, Huxley, p. 6). His greatest influences were skeptics, such as Unitarians who were developing new forms of knowledge “based on natural causes rather than the Anglican’s miracles.” He grew up in Coventry, the same place where “George Eliot lost her Puritan faith.” At age 12 Huxley was deeply influenced by James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth, which denied the Bible’s account of creation and the Flood. As a teenager he spent Sundays arguing metaphysics with skeptics such as George May. It was May who introduced Huxley to Southwood Smith’s Divine Government, which was “the Unitarian bible.” These influences rejected the divinity of Christ and the miracles of the Bible. 

Huxley had fleeting fears that skepticism would destroy the moral fiber of society, and those fears have proven true, but his conscience was hardened and by age 17 he had become a “long-haired radical” (Desmond, pp. 17, 18). 

In 1855, he married Henrietta (“Nettie”) Heathorn. She was a pious Anglican and their discussions on religion were conducted “under a dark cloud” (Desmond, p. 75). He freely expressed his doubts about “Genesis myths, and miraculous interventions, Afterlife and Atonement,” and when he attended church with her he was always “foul tempered” and considered the preaching “the greatest absurdities.” All of this worried her deeply. In one letter she wrote the following pathetic words: 

“I am often very unhappy about his sentiments--I have such need of leading unto holy things ... that I fondly hoped he would have been the guide and instructor unto more perfect ways--but here my hopes have borne bitter fruit. Something has come over me of late; I cannot pray as fervently as I did” (Desmond, p. 132).

Observe that her relationship with the unbelieving skeptic hindered her prayer life. The Bible says that if we put anything before God we are guilty of idolatry. Jesus said that if we love even our dearest relatives more than Him we are not worthy of Him. Henrietta rightly understood that she needed a husband that would teach and encourage her in the faith, but she let her emotions rather than God’s Word rule her life. 

Nettie held out for Huxley’s conversion, writing before their marriage, “May we love and grow old together and dying may we meet again in Heaven” (p. 81). 

It was a vain hope, because Huxley only grew more confirmed in his unbelief.

When his first son died at age four, the grieving Huxley rejected the idea that he needed “the hope and consolation” of Christ and considered the temptation to turn to such a hope “a scoffing devil.” When the preacher read about the bodily resurrection from 1 Corinthians 15 at the funeral, Huxley said, “They shocked me,” and, “I could have laughed with scorn” (Desmond, pp. 287, 288). Calling good evil and evil good, Huxley claimed that biblical faith is “the unpardonable sin” (p. 345). 

Like Darwin, Huxley was an evolutionary racist. He wrote, 

“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man” (Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, 1871, p. 20). 

Huxley argued that regardless of what privileges are given to the black man he will not “be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival [Caucasians], in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.”

On a visit to New Guinea, Huxley decided that it would be good if the Aborigines were wiped out. Their “elimination ... from the earth’s surface can be viewed only with satisfaction, as the removal of a great blot from the escutcheon of our common humanity” (Adrian Desmond, Huxley, p. 144).

Huxley’s life spanned a time of great change. It looked like science would conquer every human problem and carry men into a glorious millennium. The transatlantic cable carried messages instantly across vast oceans. Railroads crisscrossed England on 6,800 miles of track by 1851, drawing far-flung towns together and accelerating the pace of life. The newly opened London Underground carried men quickly from one side of the great city to the other. Cities were building modern sewage systems to “flush out medieval diseases.” Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was the first step toward the Internet. The typewriter revolutionized writing, and Thomas Edison’s light bulb turned night into day, allowing men to work around the clock and carry forth the scientific revolution with even greater speed. 

Huxley’s Assault on God and Bible

In this time of great change, skepticism was in the air. It seemed like the Bible would become just another religious fable to fall before mighty science. Huxley said, 

“Every thinking man I have met with is at heart in a state of doubt, on all the great points of religious faith. And the unthinking men ... are in as complete a state of practical unbelief” (Huxley, 1851, cited from Desmond, p. 160).  

Huxley counted radical skeptics such as Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, George Holyoake, and George Eliot among his best friends. “Secularity” was their watchword.

They wanted “a hammer to break the creationist shackles” (Desmond, p. 186), and Darwinism became that hammer. It was also described as “a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross” of biblical miracles (p. 306). 

Huxley thrived in this “sea-mist of rationalism” (Desmond, p. 169), and became one of the prominent voices in England for the overthrow of the Christian faith. He called Darwinism the “New Reformation.” Huxley wanted to “see the foot of Science on the necks of her Enemies” (p. 253), and his children in the evolutionary faith have lived to see that dream fulfilled to a great degree.

Huxley boasted, 

“Science and her methods gave me a resting place independent of authority and tradition” (Clodd, Thomas Henry Huxley, 1902, p. 15).

Huxley eventually attacked the resurrection of Christ. In his article “The Evolution of Theology,” which was published in Nineteenth Century magazine, Huxley claimed that Jehovah God was a product of evolution. He blasphemously hated the “Elohim ghost-deity” of the Old Testament who “policed moral behaviour with promises of rewards and threats of unearthly torment” (p. 547). It is obvious that he did not understand either God or His Gospel. Huxley called the account of Jesus casting out the demons in Gadarene “preposterous and immoral.” He claimed that Jesus was just another orthodox Jewish teacher. He called Paul’s theology “Neoplatonic mystigogy” (p. 571). Huxley’s largest book, Controverted Questions, was on Biblical criticism.

Huxley even competed with churches directly through his “Sunday Evenings for the People” lectures. These were even given religious-like trappings. Huxley would enter with Haydn’s Creation blasting from a church organ “to heighten the sense of awe” (Desmond, p. 345). Huxley’s lecture was enthusiastic and sermon-like. His God was “the Unknown”; his faith was man; his Bible was science; his gospel was scientific achievement. Instead of divine purpose, Huxley preached naturalistic chance. 

Huxley had a great capacity for hatred, and he loved “trashing reputations and received wisdom” (Desmond, p. 227). The Pall Mall Gazette said that “cutting up monkeys was his forte, and cutting up men was his foible.” He said, “There is no doubt I have a hot bad temper. If I hate a man, I despise him” (p. 213), and he aimed the full force of that temper at Bible believers. He was a “parson hater.” Huxley said of scientists who resisted Darwinism, “I should like to get my heel into their mouths and scr-r-unch it round” (Lord Ernie, “Victorian Memoirs and Memories,” The Quarterly Review, 1923, cited from Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men, p. 363). Of Richard Owen, one of the scientists holding out against Darwinism, Huxley said, “Before I have done with that mendacious humbug I will nail him out, like a kite to a barn door, an example to all evil doers” (Desmond, Darwin, p. 504). And Owen was not even a true Bible believer; his Christian faith was liberal. 

Of anyone who attempted to defend the Bible at any level, even those compromisers who were trying to reconcile it with evolution, proud Huxley said that if he “were Commander in Chief in their universe” he would dump them in a “hot locus in the lower regions” (p. 505). Thus, the man who mocked the the idea of a God of judgment who would send men to hell, would have sent his own enemies to such a place if he had the power! What unmitigated hypocrisy! 

As Huxley grew in prominence, he used his influence to reach two major objectives: to make a name for himself (Desmond, Huxley, p. 189) and to exalt doubt over faith, science over the Bible, man over God. He accomplished both objectives, but he lost his soul in the process. 

Huxley intended to take control of science in England and he was largely successful. He founded the secretive X-Club, which was dedicated to “science, pure and free, untrammeled by religious dogmas.” “Opponents were locked out, ignored, and mocked” (Wiker, The Darwin Myth, p. 105). Huxley’s X-Club nickname was Xalted. 

“... it consisted of nine members who, with one exception, were all presidents and secretaries of learned societies; the one exception was Herbert Spencer, whom we shall meet in the final chapter. These nine were men at the top of their profession, hand picked for their views, and holding personal influence on almost every famous scientist in the world, as well as on many distinguished radicals. .... The members met for dinner always immediately before each meeting of the Royal Society, at which time strategy was plotted. By this means, British science was literally ‘governed’, from 1864 until 1884, by Huxley and his disciples, and, with their combined influence over the scientific press” (Ian Taylor, In the Mind of Man, pp. 182-185). 

From X-Club ranks came three presidents of the Royal Society and five presidents of the British Association (Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner, p. 35). 

Cambridge biology teacher Michael Pitman observes:

“It is certain that the ‘gay and conspiratorial’ X Club, which was strongly evolutionist in character, not only influenced the appointments made for senior positions in the newly formed universities of the Victorian era but also, until its demise in the 1890s, practically controlled the business of the Royal Society” (Adam and Evolution, p. 64).

The X-Club published its own periodical called Nature as part of their aggressive campaign of selling Darwinism to the public. 

As of 2009, Nature was still standing true to its founding vision. In January of that year Nature published a free online packet titled “15 Evolutionary Gems.” One report observed that it might have been subtitled “An evangelism packet for those wishing to spread the good news about Darwinism.” The packet urged scientists and their institutions to “spread the word” that evolution is “an established fact.” The back page of the packet featured a glorification of Darwin consisting of a mythical picture of an attractive young Darwin (contrary to reality) surrounded harmoniously by all sorts of animals and plant life. Darwin appears almost like the “god of nature.” 

Huxley’s Inquisition

Science became the new religion and scientists the new priests. There was “One Catholic Apostolic Church of True Knowledge.” 

Pope Huxley and his fellow bishops in the Church of Science brought back the inquisition by disallowing challenges to evolutionary doctrine and excommunicating those who dared to question it. Consider St. George Mivart, who was “excommunicated from the Church of Science.” He started out as an ardent evolutionist and a disciple of Huxley, but he was savaged when he had the audacity to publish a book debunking Darwinism and warning that it would destroy morality and produce despair (Desmond, Huxley, p. 455). The Huxley inquisitors had Mivart’s membership in the prestigious Athenaeum Club nixed. Mivart was shunned as a leper by the Darwinian elite, and he wasn’t even a Bible believer; he was a liberal Roman Catholic who held to theistic evolution.

Mivart was only the first victim of the Darwinian inquisition, a phenomenon that has broadened in scope and intensity in our day.

By 1995, Phillip Johnson observed:

“Darwinian theory is the creation myth of our culture. It’s the officially sponsored, government financed creation myth that the public is supposed to believe in, and that creates the evolutionary scientists as the priesthood. ... So we have the priesthood of naturalism, which has great cultural authority, and of course has to protect its mystery that gives it that authority--that’s why they’re so vicious towards critics” (In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy, PBS documentary, May 30-31, 1995). 

Richard Milton, a science journalist, published a book in 1981 debunking Darwinian evolution and subsequently became the target of the Darwinian gestapo. In his review of Milton’s Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Oxford University atheist Richard Dawkins devoted two-thirds of the review to attacking the publisher for daring to print a book criticizing Darwinism and the other third to assassinating Milton’s character. Dawkins said the book is “loony,” “stupid,” “drivel,” and referred to Milton as a “harmless fruitcake” who “needs psychiatric help” (Shattering the Myths, pp. ix, x).

Dawkins has tried to have Milton blacklisted so that his scientific writings cannot be published. He has lied about him, calling him a “secret creationist.” He was successful in having the Times Higher Educational Supplement stop publication of one of Milton’s articles. 

Milton describes one group of Darwinist vigilantes who use the Internet to attack those they find guilty of promoting the heresy of Intelligent Design. They call themselves “howler monkeys.” Milton says, “The effects of the howler monkeys of the Internet are profoundly damaging to academic freedom of expression, whoever their current victim happens to be” (p. 270).

Milton observes, “There is a strong streak of intellectual arrogance and intellectual authoritarianism running through the history of Darwinism, from Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin ... through to Julian Huxley” (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, p. 277). 

In 2007, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet, was denied tenure at Iowa State University in spite of his excellent record because he believes in intelligent design (“Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science,” Evolution News & Views, June 5, 2007).

Dr. Frank Tipler, a distinguished professor of physics at the University of New Orleans, was persecuted after he merely admitted the possibility of intelligence in his book The Physics of Immortality. He complains that the “peer review” process is a tool to enforce Darwinian orthodoxy:

“Today, the refereeing process works primarily to enforce orthodoxy. I shall offer evidence that ‘peer’ review is not peer review: the referee is quite often not as intellectually able as the author whose work he judges. We have pygmies standing in judgment on giants” (“Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?” ISCID Archiv. June 30, 2003, p. 8, cited from Henry Morris, “Willingly Ignorant,” ICR). 

Joan Margueijo exposes the peer review system as an instrument of enforcing doctrinaire purity within the Darwinian establishment:

“As an individual you are judged by how many papers you publish, where you publish them, their quality, and how often they are subsequently cited. But more importantly, publication is part and parcel of the fact that scientists, who tend to live on grant money, are obligated to make their findings and ideas available to others. They will not get their share of funding unless they can show a solid publication record. ... Referee reports are often empty of scientific content and reflect nothing but the author's social standing, or their good or bad relations with the referee. . . . To cap it all, editors can be totally illiterate” (Faster than the Spread of Light, 2003, pp. 183, 217, 218).

In 1997, Dr. Lynn Margulis and Dr. Dorion Sagan, both evolutionists with impeccable scientific credentials, made the following admission:

“More and more, like the monasteries of the Middle Ages, today’s universities and professional societies guard their knowledge. Collusively, the university biology curriculum, the textbook publishers, the National Science Foundation review committees, the Graduate Record examiners, and the various microbiological, evolutionary, and zoological societies map out domains of the known and knowable; they distinguish required from forbidden knowledge, subtly punishing the trespassers with rejection and oblivion; they award the faithful liturgists by granting degrees and dispersing funds and fellowships. Universities and academies ... determine who is permitted to know and just what it is that he or she may know. Biology, botany, zoology, biochemistry, and microbiology departments within U.S. universities determine access to knowledge about life, dispensing it at high prices in peculiar parcels called credit hours. ... If an individual with ambition to study nature rejects neo-Darwinist biology in today’s ambience, he becomes a threat to his own means of livelihood” (Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution, 1997, pp. 236, 279).

Dr. Hannes Alfven made the same complaint. Since he disagreed from the Darwinian establishment’s commitment to the big bang doctrine, his papers were turned down in spite of his impressive scientific credentials (“Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist,” American Scientist, May-June 1988, p. 250).

The Darwinian inquisition has largely shut creationists out of the public school/scientific establishment. Dr. Henry Morris described this extreme bias:

“It is not that creationist scientists have not published in their own scientific fields. For example, before coming to ICR, Dr. Duane Gish had published at least 25 articles on biochemistry in secular science journals, Dr. Ken Cumming over 18 articles in biology, and Dr. Larry Vardiman at least 10 articles in atmospheric physics. My own publications in engineering include five books and 20 articles. One of the books, Applied Hydraulics in Engineering, has been continuously in print since 1963 and has been used as a textbook in scores of universities.

“But none of us can get a scientific article promoting creationism published in the secular journals, whether technical journals or popular magazines such as Reader's Digest or National Geographic. In fact, very few religious magazines will accept an article on creationism, especially one that promotes six-day creation and a global Flood.

“On one occasion, a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists was able to get an invitation for me to speak at their convention, with an agreement that the Society would publish the paper in its journal. When they saw my paper, however, they quickly reneged, even though the article had no religious material in it at all, only science. It was later published by ICR as the small book, The Scientific Case for Creation” (Morris, “Bigotry in Science,” Institute for Creation Research, n.d.).

Countless other examples could be given. In fact, entire books have been written to document the Darwinian inquisition. 

In Darwin Day in America, John Day devotes a chapter to this entitled “Banned in Burlington.” 

In the video documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein examines the persecution of scientists and professors who dare to question Darwinism or to promote even the slightest evidence for intelligent design. 

In Slaughter of the Dissidents (Southworth, WA: Leafcutter Press, 2008), Jerry Bergman (Ph.D. in human biology from Columbia Pacific University and Ph.D. in measurement and evaluation from Wayne State University) tells the “shocking truth about killing the careers of Darwin doubters.” In the Introduction, John Eidsmoe says: “In this fascinating book, Dr. Jerry Bergman--himself a victim--chronicles the history of modern religious persecution in America. A highly respected, credentialed, and published professor, he was denied tenure--and subsequently fired--admittedly because of his creationist beliefs and writings. Dr. Bergman describes numerous other cases, often concealing names to protect those who do not wish to risk losing their current positions (a common means of persecuting those with minority views)” (p. xv).

Dr. Bergman testifies: 

“[A] factor that moved me to the creationist side was the underhanded, often totally unethical techniques that evolutionists typically used to suppress dissonant ideas, primarily creationism. Rarely did they carefully and objectively examine the facts, but usually focused on suppression of creationists, denial of their degrees, denial of their tenure, ad hominem attacks, and in general, irrational attacks on their person. In short, their response in general was totally unscientific and one that reeks of intolerance, even hatred” (Persuaded by the Evidence, chapter 4).

William Dembski adds:

“As Michael Behe pointed out in an interview with the Harvard Political Review for a biologist to question Darwinism endangers one’s career. ‘There’s good reason to be afraid. Even if you’re not fired from your job, you will easily be passed over for promotions. I would strongly advise graduate students who are skeptical of Darwinian theory not to make their views known.’ ... Doubting Darwinian orthodoxy is comparable to opposing the party line of a Stalinist regime. ... Overzealous critics of intelligent design regard it as their moral duty to keep biology free from intelligent design, even if that means taking extreme measures. I’ve known such critics to contact design theorists’ employers and notify them of the ‘heretics’ in their midst. Once ‘outed,’ the design theorists themselves get harassed and harangued with e-mails. Next, the press does a story mentioning their unsavory intelligent design associations. (The day one such story appeared, a close friend and colleague of mine mentioned in the story was dismissed from his research position at a prestigious molecular biology laboratory. He had worked in that lab for ten years. ... Welcome to the inquisition” (The Design Revolution, pp. 304, 305).

Walt Brown, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, describes the way that evolutionists have controlled the scientific fields since the day of Thomas Huxley. He uses the field of geology as an example:

“Professors in the new and growing field of geology were primarily selected from those who supported the anti-catastrophe principle. These professors did not advance students who espoused catastrophes. An advocate of a global flood was branded a ‘biblical literalist’ or ‘fuzzy thinker’--not worthy of an academic degree. Geology professors also influenced, through the peer review process, what papers could be published. Textbooks soon reflected their orthodoxy, so few students became ‘fuzzy thinkers.’ This practice continues to this day, because a major criterion for selecting professors is the number of their publications” (In the Beginning, p. 253).

Consider Dr. Caroline Crocker, a cell-biologist and full-time visiting faculty member at George Mason University. After she showed several slides about intelligent design in a class on cells, she was reprimanded, pulled from lecture duties, and her contract was not renewed the following semester. She testified: “Students are not allowed to question Darwinism. There are universities where they poll students on what they believe and single them out.” 

Some Darwinists have even hinted at or openly called for the imprisonment of creationists.

“Richard Dawkins has written that anyone who denies evolution is either ‘ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked--but I’d rather not consider that’) (New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34). It isn’t a big step from calling someone wicked to taking forceful measures to put an end to their wickedness. John Maddox, the editor of Nature, has written in his journal that ‘it may not be long before the practice of religion must be regarded as anti-science’ (‘Defending Science Against Anti-Science,’ Nature, 368, 185). In his recent book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, philosopher Daniel Dennett compares religious believers--90 percent of the population--to wild animals who may have to be caged, and he says that parents should be prevented (presumably by coercion) from misinforming their children about the truth of evolution, which is so evident to him” (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, chapter 11). 

The reason that the aforementioned St. George Mivart was treated so savagely by Huxley’s crowd is that his refutation of Darwinism was effective, and the same is true for the targets of the Darwinian thought police today. In spite of what staunch Darwinists pretend, they do not want an open and free discussion of their theories. The only way they can deal with the truth is through icons, just-so stories, ridicule, smoke screens, and straw men, and when that doesn’t work they descend to merciless personal attacks.

Consider six powerful evidences that Mivart gave against “natural selection” --

“(1) It is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures, because the first stages cannot yet contribute to survival and so, wouldn’t be selected. (2) Similar biological structures develop from wholly different origins, something that couldn’t happen by mere random variation. (3) There are biological grounds for believing that the evolutionary transition between species may be developed suddenly instead of gradually. (4) Species have definite though very different limits to their variability. (5) Certain fossil transitional forms are absent, which might have been expected to be present. (6) There are many remarkable phenomena in organic forms upon which natural selection throws no light whatever, such as the flounder, whose eyes shift from both sides of the head when it is young and swims upright to one side when it matures and swims flattened on the bottom. ‘How such transit of one eye a minute fraction of the journey towards the other side of the head could benefit the individual is indeed far from clear’” (Wiker, The Darwin Myth, pp. 126, 127).

Though Huxley is called “Darwin’s Bulldog,” even he doubted Darwin’s doctrine of natural selection, which is the very heart of Darwin’s principle. For Huxley, Darwinism was a hammer to destroy biblical creationism, and whether or not it was scientifically true was really beside the point! Huxley’s sympathetic biographer says, “But the details were never of overriding importance to Huxley. Whether or not the Origin pointed to a Golden Calf, it led his Israelites out of the wilderness. ... Huxley was exuberantly endorsing the naturalism of Darwin’s vision, not the fine points of his theory” (Desmond, pp. 259, 262). Huxley foolishly looked upon biblical faith as a “wilderness,” and any idol was preferable. 

Huxley coined the term “agnostic” to describe the state of supposedly not knowing whether there is a God and glorifying a skeptical mindset. The term, which means “no knowledge,” was adopted by Darwin. Huxley’s biographer said, “Agnosticism was to become the new faith of the West.” Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Edward Aveling, in his 1897 article “Charles Darwin and Karl Marx,” rightly observed that “Atheist is only Agnostic writ aggressive, and Agnostic is only Atheist writ respectable.” Lenin said that Huxley’s “agnosticism serves as a fig-leaf for materialism” (Materialism and Empirio-criticism).