Evolution And Religion Essay, Research Paper

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.

?Evolution.? Science and Technology Illustrated. 1st ed. 1984. Jones,

Steve. Darwin?s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1999