Discussion on Darwin's Dangerous Ideas - Essay Example

Darwin’s Dangerous Ideas In reference to the biblical narration, God created man and woman and put them in the Garden of Eden. The garden was an ideal place with everything that man wanted. All that man was to do was to live and glorify God. This is the fundamental ideology behind the story of creation as outlined by the Christina faith. Religions give hope and try to find answers to problems unknown. This makes them evoke such a large following from the masses. In such a set up, there arose a great scientist who believed in rational explanations of the physical and the metaphysical existence of the living and the non living. Dr. Charles Darwin came up with the great theory of evolution and the principle of natural selection in which only the best prepared organisms with the most desired genes live to maturity and mate to produce offspring with better traits to enable them survive in the environment with varied challenges.

The theory has been largely used to explain the differences between organisms of similar species. Polar bears in the Antarctica regions are more hairy than those found in the Savanna regions in South America. The difference in these animals, as per Darwin’s explanation, results from the need of the polar bear to insulate from the stinging cold of the Antarctica regions. Darwin’s ideas are considered dangerous as they oppose the largely believed notion that God created all the animals with the uniqueness they posses.

Darwin clearly explains that the environment in which an organism lives plays a major role in designing the features it posses. Reply to the Posting When man realized that he could find practical answers to the problems facing him, he started questioning the validity of the gospel spread by the church. Diseases like plague, malaria, cholera had their causes easily explained and treatment crafted from the very principle of their existence. This saw a mass boycott of followers from the church in mid 18th century.

People started losing faith in the unseen and instead embraced science as it provided realistic solutions to the problems facing the people. This was unlike the ideas spread by the church where people believed that sufferings were as a result of sin and thus people were accustomed to embracing pain believing they were punishment for their past transgressions.Darwin observes that the warm and humid areas offer breeding ground for mosquitoes thus the high prevalence of malaria in such areas. Such findings are very practical and explain the prevalence of malaria in tropical Africa.

Furthermore, from his explanations, vaccines were invented that saw the complete eradication of such disease as polio and cowpox.Darwin played a pivotal role in opposing the church. But then again, the more complex the scientific inventions become, the more churches get established and more believers turning up. This implies that there is some nourishment that man will only find from believing in the unseen. Science makes life better but religion makes the spirit better; both are needed for the existence of man.

Work CitedHerbert S. (1988). Theory of Natural selection. McGraw-Hill: New York. Print.www.globalchange.umich.edu/biology-online>tutorials