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