Evolution And Religion
Charles Darwin’s introduction of evolution, created the battle
between
evolution and religion. Still, to this day, the influence of
Darwinism has
people asking themselves where they came from. God, a higher
spirit, or the
process of evolution, are the two main choices to pick from.
For many years, God
was the predominant answer, but after the ideas of
Darwin, scientists have taken
the task to trace humans back to the beginning
of existence and try to give a
scientific explanation. Obviously, since no
one really knows for certain what
happened that resulted in the creation of
man, it can only be determined on a
personal basis; through religious beliefs
and educated guesses. It’s quite
clear that without the influence of
Darwinism, there would be no controversy.
However, there doesn’t have to
be a controversy. The creation of man should be
thought of as a combination
of God and evolution. Before the thoughts of Darwin,
most people concluded
that their must have been a higher creator who had placed
them on earth. So,
for many years, they worshiped God tenaciously, and to this
day some people
still do. To change such an idea that has existed for so many
years is hard
to accomplish. Therefore, Darwin’s theory was considered
outrageous.
According to Steve Jones, in his book, Darwin’s Ghost, in 1991 a
hundred
million Americans believed that during the last ten thousand years, man
was
created by God the way he is now. Man wasn’t created from a previous
specie (
1). It’s most likely that there was a higher spirit that created
the
existence of life. It explains how the world began. If you sit and think
about
it enough, it’s frightening to consider that there could, possibly,
never have
been anything at all; just an empty space of nothing, with no
living mammals,
insects, trees, grass, or clouds. However, the fact that
humans, along with the
other million types of living mammals, insects, and so
forth, were created by
God is very unlikely. More likely, after a higher
spirit created the beginning
life form, a single cell organism, after many
years, this organism progressed
into what is now, considered the highest life
form alive. In Darwin’s book,
Origin of Species, he states that: Nothing
at first can appear more difficult to
believe than that the more complex
organs and instincts should have been
perfected not by means superior to,
though analogous with, human reason, but by
the accumulation of innumerable
slight variations, each good for the individual
possessor. Nevertheless, this
difficulty, though appearing to our imagination
insuperably great, cannot be
considered real if we admit the following
propositions, namely, - that the
gradations in the perfection of any organ or
instinct, which we may consider,
either do now exist or could have exists, each
good of its kind, -that all
organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree
, variable, -and lastly,
that there is a struggle for existence leading to the
preservation of each
profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of
these
propositions cannot, I think, be disputed. (Jones 331) Darwin never
states
that there was not a a superior being, but stares that organs and
instincts were
not perfected by God. While a higher being began life,
scientific actions took
place to get where we are today. In the book of
Science and Technology, it
states that, "In Darwin’s Theory had a weakness,
in that it didn’t explain
how and why small variations in individuals
eventually created a new species. He
believed it had to do with reproduction
and heredity, but it wasn’t until the
1930’s that geneticists explained
how; through Modern Synthesis" (1192 ).
With that bit of information,
it’s even more logical that Evolution and God
coexist. It’s also logical that
Darwin not only influenced the Science world,
but he also influenced
Religion.
Bibliography
"Evolution." Science and Technology
Illustrated. 1st ed. 1984. Jones,
Steve. Darwin’s Ghost. New York: Random
House, 1999