evolution and religion

The ways in which religion relates to evolution. Evolution is the idea that life, and sometimes human culture, has developed from simple to more complex forms. Evolution is an old idea. Some ancient philosophers, such as the Roman poet Lucretius (c. 95–55 B.C.E.), had already written about it. But evolution came into its own in Europe and North America during the 19th century. Two kinds of evolution are especially important with regard to religion. One is the theory that life on Earth has evolved over a period of hundreds of millions of years. Today virtually all reputable scientists—and a good many religious people—accept this theory. The second is the question of whether religion itself has evolved. The theory of the evolution of life is inseparable from the name Charles Darwin (1809–82). In 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species. It made the theory of evolution unavoidable. Darwin did not actually propose the idea that life had evolved. Others, such as Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), had already done that. Nor did Darwin argue that life evolved from nonliving matter. That idea only came later. What Darwin did was show how evolution could work. He proposed a theory of "natural selection." In his view, forms of life change constantly, if only in minor ways. Only the best forms survive. The word "best" here means best able to compete for resources and reproduce. By the end of the 19th century the theory of evolution had been widely accepted by theologians as well as by scientists. But in the 20th century a backlash against evolution arose among some American Protestants. This was fundamentalism (see EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY, and FUNDAMENTALISM, CHRISTIAN). Besides rejecting evolution, fundamentalists opposed historical methods of studying the BIBLE and a movement in Christianity that emphasized social reform. In 1925 fundamentalists and scientists squared off in the famous "monkey trial" of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee. He was accused of violating the law by teaching evolution in a biology class. In the middle 1970s fundamentalists began demanding that public schools in the United States teach "creation science" in addition to evolution. Almost all reputable scientists reject "creation science" as bogus. Unlike the fundamentalists, many have accepted evolution without rejecting traditional religion. Indeed, Darwin himself remained a committed Christian all his life. Some have asserted that science is about facts, while religion is concerned with values. This was the position of the German theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89). Others have maintained that biological evolution explains material aspects of human life, but not its mental or spiritual side. This was the position of A. R. Wallace, an associate of Darwin's, and of Rudolf OTTO, a philosopher of religion. Still others, such as the Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), have taught that the human spirit evolves. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, some anthropologists, especially in Great Britain, debated whether religion itself had evolved. Well before Darwin, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76) had suggested that all religion had grown out of POLYTHEISM, the WORSHIP of many gods. In the 19th and early 20th centuries some thinkers claimed that religion began with other forms: the belief in GHOSTS (Herbert Spencer), a "disease of language" (Friedrich Max Müller), the belief in spirits (E. B. Tylor), a powerful, nonpersonal, electric-like force called mana (R. R. Marett). The most widely known fi gure may have been James George FRAZER. He divided human history into three stages: magic, religion, and science. After World War I anthropologists rejected all of these ideas. More important, they rejected the attempt to identify a single series of steps through which religion had evolved into the forms we know today. Most English-speaking thinkers have remained suspicious of the topic of religion's evolution.