Kevin Morgan LCC 3302 The Effect of Darwin’s Theory on the Christian and Scientific Communities 570 It is well known that Darwin was not the biggest fan of religion. However, his general attitude toward the church was far from malicious. Darwin’s research was purely of scientific merit, and yet was perceived as an attack on the idea of creationism. The church took personal offense by his publications, and even retaliated with volumes of work discrediting Darwin. While his ideas were revolutionary at the time, Christianity has persisted for over a century, but has built a tolerance to the ideas of natural selection.
Many cultures believed that gods or goddesses created life. For example within the Christian religious tradition, it is believed that organisms were created by an almighty god. Due to the lack of scientific material, scientists are unable to test this theory of life, leading them to seek answers from a naturalist explanation. Up until the mid- nineteenth century, naturalists held onto the idea of spontaneous generation. This theory suggested that life was created out of nothing.
In Brave New World this believes doesn’t even appear for one moment. The society life in a regime controlled by Mustapha Mond, the most powerful men in the World State. The liberty doesn’t mean anything to him. Actually, even before a person is born, they lose their liberties because they are conditioned to love and like what Mustapha and the government want them to love and like; people are created chemically, they are artificial. After reading this, a Christian will be horrified because they believe that even before the baby is born, since the moment when an egg is fertilized, that future individual is consider as a person with sentiments and rights.
This misunderstanding of evolution can cause people to dismiss the whole theory and believe in creationism or intelligent design. Creationism is the belief that the world was created by God as stated in Genesis, the first book of
Evolutionary Christianity With the times that we are in today, we can see that our faith is at the point of maturing, or becoming more known to man individually. Our faith at one time use to be pure greatness, somehow this all changed with time, but now we can see that the greatness of faith is returning. Evolution is expanding globally and making itself more known to the world. Many people that believe in different religions tend to have put aside evolution. This is because to some people, evolution is more of a random, has no meaning and to some it is 'Godless'.
Charles Darwin was famous for his controversial theory that animals evolved by means of natural selection. He produced a book about his theory, implicating that humans were not especially created, but had evolved. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/darwin_charles.shtml) Darwin developed his theory of natural selection in 1837. Before this, it was generally believed that every species was specially created by God, and could not be altered. Up until his voyage on the HMS Beagle, Darwin, like all others, believed in a traditional Biblical creation of all life forms.
Justice of Creation Victor Frankenstein created a living, thinking, and intelligent creature, and with that comes certain responsibilities. Even though he should not have tried to “play God” and create someone that is the same, in all but physical appearance to other human beings. I’d like to discuss Victor creating the creature, the responsibilities that he should have accepted when he created him, and the consequences of the aforementioned decisions. First, Victor Frankenstein, or any other person on this earth at any time, has absolutely no right or power to create life. There is a relatively strong connection to God in this book and many people during this time period believed in God.
However, creationism says that the world and living things was created by God. Creationism refuses the idea of evolution and it causes some arguments about whether evolution should be taught in schools or not. Evolution should be taught in schools so that students can gain different points of view about human nature. Creationists believe that creationism explains the existence of God. They do not believe that species change into totally different and separate animals through evolution, as sacred books mention about existence of God and they contains strict rules.
Alternatively, differences in DNA may provide immunity to a disease which affects most members of a species. Although, if widespread disease can wipe out large amounts of a species, it will create a genetic bottleneck, where the size of a species gene pool is dramatically reduced and only the individuals with the mutated genes survive. This leads to a founder effect, where there is very little diversity in the species. A good example of this can be seen in the cheetah population. They suffer from many genetic problems caused by inbreeding, after hunting severely reduced their population.
- Vincent Freeman (Gattaca) In Gattaca, set in the future, society has evolved to such a point that it is seen as out of the ordinary to want to conceive a child naturally. Scientists have found a way to genetically modify children before they are conceived, using the ‘best parts’ of the parents. Those who were born naturally –‘faith births’ – are at the bottom of society, filling jobs like janitors and cleaners while those born genetically superior are the ones who become the successful ones. Whether they have achieved perfection however is debateable. Many of the ‘genetically superior’ grow up to be