Darwin Revelation

After learning all about Charles Darwin in class the past few weeks i have gained a better understanding of his life and what his finding meant and did for the world. My personal revelation is how large of an impact Darwin had on religion and science. He made people see science as more valid and true than it was seen before he published his findings. Prior to this, people trusted religion to explain things that were not easily explained by reason, mainly the big question of how we as humans came to be. When Darwin first came out with his theories, most people did not agree because of the heavy trust in their religion. Once more people saw that his ideas made sense, they gained popularity and over the last 150 years or so, many if not most people think of his theory of evolution as more of a fact, and far less people believe completely in a religion.

Darwin is very similar to Galileo, who we studied earlier in the semester, in that his revolutionary ideas went against what the church said was true. Before Galileo, people thought that the earth was the center of the entire universe and that everything else revolved around it, this was according the bible. When he introduced a new idea that the earth was not the center, not even for our solar system, people and especially the church were outraged, and he was sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. After this, scientists around Europe became frightened, and separated science and the material world from religion and the spiritual world. This new picture of the universe didn't fully replace the universe people had known before because there was no place for God or humans and it didn't explain its origin (Abrams).

Even though Galileo's ideas went against religion, it did not loose much of its power and popularity. This is why i think Darwin was really the first person to completely change how humans saw religion, he disproved the main idea behind it, which is where did we come from?. For all or most of history, people had believed in some sort of God who created everything including all the plants and animals we know today. All of the sudden, there came Darwin with a brand new idea that completely went against the main idea behind most religions, or at least Christianity. Suddenly people were faced with a different idea that really made sense, and made them question their religion.

To me, Darwin was so important for science as a whole because through his findings and what he published, he caused people to believe in science and what it can teach us about our universe and everything in it. I also think he was extremely important because he caused religions to loose much of their authority and even validity. Today, science seems to be taking over the power religion, mainly the Catholic Church, used to have. As science gained popularity over the years after Galileo, it became more and more accepted by the people, so the church has been forced to change its view points more and more. Now even the Vatican has a telescope and employs scientists and tries to persuade people that there is still a place for God in this scientific world. As Richard Dawkins points out in this really interesting video i found, these two things cannot be reconciled. He says that prior to Darwin, the most powerful evidence that there was a god was the illusion of a designer. Once Darwin disproved that species were designed by a higher being, there was and is no room left for God or religion (Richard). Darwin gave science its credit and without him i believe we would be in a very different and worse off world today, its science.



Appleman, Philip. "Darwin: On Changing the Mind" in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York:W.W.Norton, 2001.

Abrams, Nancy and joel Primack. "Cosmology and 21st-Century Culture." Science. September 7, 2001. http://sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5536/1769

Mason, Michael. "How to Teach Science to the Pope." Discover Magazine. August 18, 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/18-how-to-teach-science-to-the-pope

Richard Dawkins - Darwin's Brave New World (Part 1/2). Perf. Richard Dawkins. YouTube. 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. .