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This page is an extract of an essay by Garrit Hardin, as publshed in Science and Creationism, Ashley Montagu, ed.  ( New York; Oxford Univ. Press, 1984 )

The idea of evolution is much older than Darwinism.  What Darwin contributed was a believable mechanism to account for evolution.  Fifteen years before the Origin of Species, an anonymous volume, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, espoused the evolutionary view.  Scientifically, Vestiges was, in the opinion of scientists both then and now, a poor thing, but it was very popular; it went through ten editions before the Origin of Species was published.

Many religious people saw evolution as a threat to morality and religions.  One of the most disturbed of these was Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Bretheren.  Gosse was not only a minister but also a naturalist ( a common combination in Victorian England ).  During the 1850s, Darwin consulted him on many matters, though without ever revealing the heretical trend of his thought.

Gosse, upset by Vestiges, set out to demolish completely all theories of evolution.  He began with geology.  Geologists explain the strata of the rocks by physical principles, deducing that it must have taken millions of years to deposit layer upon layer of sedimentary rocks.  There is no way to reconsile this deduction with the religious belief that the world began in 4004 B.C., as proclaimed in the seventeenth century by James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh.  But Gosse thought he had found a way.  His book, published two years before the Origin, was entitled Omphalos.  The name is significant: It is Greek for "belly button."

Consider Adam and Eve, said Gosse.  Did they have navels?  Since the navel is a vestige of the link between the fetus and the placenta, one could argue that they had no navels, since Adam was created from dust and Eve was created from Adam's rib.  But one could also argue that the first human had to have a navel;  it is inconceivable that God (a perfect being) would create imperfect creatures.  Adam's and Eve's navels were not evidence of a pre-existing being (namely a mother) but were merely what one would expect in God-created creatures.

Gosse explained the stratification of the rocks by the same logic.  Strata are not evidence of processes occurring over millions of years; they are merely what one would expect to find in a perfect world.  The strata and their fossils were all created on day three ( see Genesis ) as a materialization of God's thought.  The fossils are merely artifacts that God was pleased to place among the strata when he created the world.  The deductions of the geologist and the biologist fall to the ground, and the Bible stands supreme as the revelation of truth.  So said Gosse.

Gosse expected Omphalos to be attacked by scientists.  It was.  He was not prepared for the bitter denunciation by the religious community.  Asked to write a review of Omphalos, his friend Charles Kingsley, a minister and the author of Westward Ho!, refused.  He wrote to Gosse explaining why.

"You have given," Kingsley said, "the 'vestiges of creation theory' the best shove forward which it has ever had.  I have a special dislike for that book;  but, honestly,  I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Omphalos.

"Shall I tell you the truth?  It is best.  Your book is the first that ever made me doubt  [ the doctrine of absolute creation ], and I fear it will make hundreds do so.  Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver.  I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ... your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie.  It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ... believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.

"To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds.  It will not make me throw away my Bible.  I trust and hope.  I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others;  but for the young I do fear.  I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands."

Gosse, abandoned by churchmen, gave up theorizing and returned to merely observing nature.  As a popularizer of nature, his position in science education is an honorable one.  His Evenings at the Microscope persuaded many an English gentleman to take up the microscope as a hobby.