From the very beginning of Charles Darwin's attempt to make a career decision, another path always seemed more appropriate. He began as a medical student at Cambridge and soon afterward, re-routed towards the seminary. However, in his quest to become a clergyman, Darwin faced further uncertainties. One may wonder how an aspiring priest became one of the most prominent figures in all of scientific history. .
The dominant belief of Darwin's era, the 1800's, fixated upon the notion that everything in existence was divinely created in its perfect form by God. This was a time when church, state, and science were all in the same. So why did Darwin, a man of God, ponder facts that were thought beyond our ability to prove, the facts that there may have been a biological reason for nature to make adaptations at the will of nature itself, and not by a divine being?.
In 1832, Charles Darwin boarded the H.M.S. Beagle, for a five year voyage, as the gentleman companion of the vessel's captain, Captain Fitzroy. This voyage would prove to be the primary turning point of Darwin's life along with his beliefs of life itself. On board, Darwin became the default naturalist of the ship, partly due to his "bottomless" funding from his inherited aristocratic well being. While touring the oceans, Darwin collected animals, fossils, and other biological material from each docking port. He also read The Principles of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell. Darwin found this literature very intriguing since Lyell argued against the belief that the earth was created 4,000 years before the birth of Christ, an assumption based on the chronology of the Old Testament. Instead, Lyell argued that the earth is constantly changing at a very slow rate, the same rate at which it must have always changed. Therefore, by studying mountains, glaciers, and other grand features of the planet, the world must be dramatically older than the ancestry of biblical literature indicates.