Today a random student wandered into my office and wanted to talk about evolution and religion. Heavy food for thought! And he wasn't even a biology or a science major (physics...poor sap)! We chatted on about Darwin's life and the prevalent thoughts of his time. I then told him about the basics of evolution theory and supporting evidence. At the center of evolution is the idea of natural selection or Survival of the Fittest. Organisms need to survive long enough to pass on their genes to their offspring. Genes coding for characteristics that are not beneficial, lead to the death of the organisms. And as one of my great past science teacher often said: "Dead things don't reproduce." In essence, organism populations are changing with each subsequent generation. Along with natural selection, is the idea that organisms share common ancestors. Then he wanted to know more about creation myths across different religions. And, surprisingly, this lead to a great discussion on how religions have "evolved" over time. Those religious beliefs that adapted to change in people's thoughts survived and are most supported today. In the same light many of these religions are related to each other at some point in their past...very similar to sharing a common ancestor. Interesting...
Then I happened to remember this quote from a favorite fiction writer:
"Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion."
-Terry Pratchett
Food for thought...now discuss amongst yourselves.
3 comments:
Why did you not take this opportunity to voice your belief in a higher Being? I, myself, believe that God had His part in evolution and it was His idea of survival of the fittest, creating better as time went on.
Momma Bear
Might I take the opportunity to point out once again that the Cath-a-lics are pretty down with evolutionary and big bang theory and will be hosting a conference this year to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species.
Dr. Richard Dawkins refers to the way religions evolve as the "Shifting Moral Zeitgeist" -- the idea that morality and religion are orthogonal. He gives many examples of this; for instance, the Bible used to be used to justify slavery, repression of women, etc. and now most people would agree that all of these things are immoral. If the Bible didn't change, what did? What guides the way people pick and choose which passages to take seriously and which to conveniently ignore? There is an outside, independent morality in society that is completely separate from religion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJLqDSfv6dU
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