FREE ESSAY ON EVOLUTION VS. RELIGION

EVOLUTION VS. RELIGION

Evolution vs. 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
Works Cited
"Evolution." Science and Technology Illustrated. 1st ed. 1984.
Jones, Steve. Darwin's Ghost. New York: Random House, 1999