The Bible tells us that life was created on the fourth, fifth and sixth day by god more than 10,000 years ago and main feature of the earth were produced by Noah’s flood. Moreover, there has been no remarkable changes in life since then. Animals of different kind were created which acknowledges us that evolution was merely the process by which God created life. But, according to Darwin, evolution is natural process and believed that cosmos is closed system of material which can never be influenced by anything outside of material nature. Large explosion of matter created cosmos, and everything produced naturally. The very first organism was created by chance without any purpose. Others were evolved through natural process such that all the plants and animals that have ever existed on the earth have been evolved from the same organism, which means we all have same ancestor[footnoteRef:1]. In a specific population, characters which favor the animal to survive remains with them and to cope with new environment new characters are developed during the course of time. Such characters get transferred to next generations and become more frequent in later generations. Thus, there appear to be clash between science and religion. Religion relies on faith and belief as well as it helps people to make meaning out of their lives, where as there is no faith in science because it involves only observation leading to common sense decision. Moreover, religion gives the feeling that world is decent. On the contrary the struggle for existence gives the sense of death, waste, and selfish concerns over our own genes. Also, it is difficult to overcome the existing belief that humans evolve from the lower animals. Furthermore, living organism are enormously complex and such complex organism created by chance seems clearly less credible.[footnoteRef:2] Thus, Darwin lacks strong evidence and witness to integrate religious and scientific thinking which keeps me in dilemma over issue of the evolution of species. [1: Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. The Harvard Classics; v. 11. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909.
] [2: Johnson, Phillip E. Darwin on Trial. Washington, D.C. : Lanham, MD: Regnery Gateway; Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 1991.
]
Darwin’s grand idea of natural selection is the basic mechanism of evolution. Natural selection works by relative advantage, not an absolute standard of design. “…as natural selection acts by competition for resources, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates”.[footnoteRef:3] Evolution through natural selection depends on mutation. Though mutation gives new genetic information, it cannot arise when it is needed because mutation is a random process which arise without any sign advantages and disadvantages. Mutation is mostly harmful which cannot improve the characters in organisms. Thus, created newly organism are impaired rather than fittest. Due to unguided and random processes of mutation, they do not produce evolution due to absence of constructive ability. Mutation deals at the cellular level. Darwin failed to give the account of evolution at the cellular level. “Natural selection can do something, but not that it can create anything that was not already in existence”.[footnoteRef:4] For instance, there is shortage of food for tiger and we clearly know that tiger will die but will never eat grass. To increase the chances of survival, if tiger starts to eat grass then, should we call it tiger? Off course not. Moreover, if that something else thrive and reproduces, thus produce organism will be able to digest cellulose; it’s the matter of logic and depends on the plan of the designer. I agree that natural selection has helped to explain various process of living organisms. However, it cannot fully explain many aspects of evolution such that natural selection is not the exclusive means of modification in organisms. [3: Darwin, The origin,] [4: Johnson, Darwin on,]
Darwin was a gradualist. In his time, very few fossils were explored, and Darwin believed if fossils were discovered that would more possibly show the evidences of gradual change of species from one to another. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Instead, it shows sudden transition. “Fossils are the imprints of earlier life forms that had been wiped out by gigantic catastrophes.”[footnoteRef:5] Darwin purpose his theory by studying tiny fraction of fossils. It was difficult for him to find out the right fossils to prove his theory and he was puzzled to find the traces of sea creature high up on the mountains. Various fossils records of animals like Archaeopteryx and presences of connecting link between animals supports Darwin’s view of gradualist. I guess Darwin would be very happy and pleased to know modern paleontology supported by chemical dating and microscopic analysis of fossils. Moreover, evolution isn't anything that can be fully grasp within the second. It takes lots of time to understand all the ecological and geographical process. However, he purposed that fossils frequently resemble species found in the same area. Darwin wrote a book based on observation for a short period of time such that he lacks detailed and researched information of fossils. [5: Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie’s World. New York: FarrarStraussGiroux, 2007, p. 405]
Darwin included the concept of soft inheritance in Origin of species but failed to understand the importance of the result. He states that individuals which survive the struggle for existence transmit their useful variations to the offspring, which will also prove to be fit. Thus, offspring of selected individual are born fit to the environment. But how? He did not provide the sources of variation and process of transfer of changes from one generation to another of mode of inheritances. Thomas Hayden noted the saying of paleontologist Niles Eldredge that Darwin “didn’t know anything about why organisms resemble their parents, or the basis of heritable variations in populations.”[footnoteRef:6] Later Gregor Mendel found out that offspring inherits a set of genetic traits from each parent. In addition, there is gap in knowledge of Darwin due Genetics. In fact, at that time “genetics” was not even coined and DNA was not discovered which create a hole in Darwin’s follow of knowledge. Today every DNA can be tracked and can be found what mutation exactly occurred. Thus, we can know how the origin of new species. Concerning the genetics, there are lots of evolutionary surprises for Darwin like number of genes which can be transferred among individuals, genetic engineering, and many more. Nevertheless, this doesn’t show any account for Darwinism. A biologist at the University of California at Irvine named Francisco Ayala said that, “Darwin did not know 99 percent of what we know but the 1 percent he knew was the most important part”. [6: Hayden, Thomas. 2009. "What Darwin Didn't Know. (Cover story)." Smithsonian 39, no. 11: 40- 48. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 26, 2017).
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After the careful analysis of works of Darwin, it is clear that his ideas of natural selection and his book had great influence by evidencing the evolution of organisms. Even though, lack of enough evidences, opposition by the churches, and latest discoveries weaken his speculation, his powerful thesis hold true in modern evolution.
References list:
1 Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. The Harvard Classics; v. 11. New York: P.F. Collier
& Son, 1909.
2 Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie’s World. New York: FarrarStraussGiroux, 2007, p. 399-422
3 Hayden, Thomas. 2009. "What Darwin Didn't Know. (Cover story)." Smithsonian 39, no. 11:
40- 48. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 26, 2017).
4 Johnson, Phillip E. Darwin on Trial. Washington, D.C.: Lanham, MD: Regnery Gateway;
Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 1991.
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