Why did the theory of evolution turn into anti-religion and or God in recent centuries?

Question

The idea of evolution had occurred to the ancient Greeks, and for centuries it was reiterated by European philosophers, naturalists, and breeders of pets and farm animals who selectively bred species to retain desirable traits.

Answer 1

That would be natural selection, evolution is only 150 years as it's current concept. Why did it turn religion on it's ear? Because is poses another answer to previously established questions.

Dig into Galileo's trial and book publishing if you want to find a previous example of this happening.

Answer 2

Well if you believe it, you are basically saying the first five chapters of Genesis are total fantasy.  It isn't really anti-god per se, it just says that the Bible got a pretty major event wrong.

Answer 3

There is no problem with micro-evolution - evolution within species.

The problem is when you say that a big blob of gooh turned into living organisms, which turned into various animals, and eventually into humans.  

That completely contradicts "And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul"  Genesis 2:7

Answer 4

The Theory of Evolution is not inherently anti-God or anti-religion.  There is nothing about the theory that negates the concept of God.

There is nothing in the theory that states that God could not have created the Cosmos and then let evolution take its course.

Answer 5

There are a number of reasons.  First, it has to do with Biblical literalism.  Second, many people mistakenly equate "randomness" with "meaningless" (and natural selection is NON-random, but it's based on random mutations.)    

Third, Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection has great explanatory power, and this is seen as threatening to many theists, or at least "inconvenient" for many evangelicals who want to street-peddle their religion to skeptical potential converts. (like Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort--just watch the guys street prothelasize).

Fourth, Darwinian evolution is very counterintuitive, and it is easy for someone to see how "obvious" it is that living things are designed, and therefore start to speculate about how anyone could believe otherwise about life.

Fifth, there are some scientists who have had their own agendas, such as Lewontin (mentioned by Martin S) who have blurred the distinction between science and metaphsyics, and there are also other scientists whose quotes have been taken completely out of context (Lynn Margules and Stuart Kauffman, also mentioned by Martin S) to mislead others.  

Sadly, many who are convinced that evolution (or anything that conflicts with their view) will lead to eternal damnation have no qualms about using deceptive and dishonest tactics to spread their beliefs.

Answer 6

I wouldn't really say that evolution, as we tend to think of it in today's world, occurred to the ancient Greeks or European intellectuals.  And, while breeding was accepted on the basis of observable heridity, people didn't really extend that to speciation.

After Darwin, evolution appeared to do away with the need for creation to explain complex structures. Applying the concept to the human race was particularly offensive to many people as well.

Answer 7

Childishness among people trying to be Christian - so they can't accept Genesis as being quite uniformative about timescales compared to modern science.

Both Genesis and Science think God made man and animals from the ground - there's a big clue there that many seem to ignore...

Answer 8

Evolution is not anti-religion.  It merely contradicts certain creation stories.  Many people manage to accept evolution while still having faith in their religion.

And there is nothing about evolution that says there cannot be gods.

Answer 9

Evolution, by itself, is not the problem.  The notion that animals evolve in response to breeding was not in question.

It was when they extended the theory to determine that evolution was the process that developed mankind that the Church took offense.

Answer 10

the theory doesn't care what you believe.

Answer 11

It isn't anti-religion and does not contradict the Bible whatsoever.  

Answer 12

The rise of Christian Fundamentalism is the answer to your question. The idea of evolution challenges the inerrancy of the Bible. Fundamentalists are convinced every word of the Bible is true, therefore the book of Genesis is right and evolution is wrong.

Answer 13

Because evolution as expressed by breeding is quite different from what is taught today where God is totally left out of the picture and abiogenesis theories about life coming from inanimate matter and chance mutations turning a fish into a frog into a reptile into a mammal are all strung together to attempt explain away a divine Creator.

It's a new "religion" in effect that competes with Biblical religions.

http://www.americanvision.org/articlearc...

The distinguished biologist Lynn Margulis has rather scathingly referred to new-Darwinism as "a minor twentieth century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology." Stuart Kauffman observes that "natural selection" has become so central an explanatory force in neo-Darwinism that "we might as well capitalise [it] as though it were the new deity."

Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist and author of a number of books on Darwinian theory, illustrates the implicit metaphysical starting point of the evolutionary dogma. Even when the facts point away from a certain scientific explanation for a given theory, evolution must be followed because the materialistic religion of Darwin must be protected against any Divine intrusion:

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Answer 14

Sadly there seem to be a large number of people out there who equate the Bible with the Q'uran. The Bible NEVER claimed to be literally inerrant. The Q'uran DOES make that claim.

Since a literally inerrant Scripture would mean that Genesis is also inerrant, well, we can't have THAT now can we? So, the fight against evolution.

Those who espouse this view are the spiritual descendants of the Flat-Earthers and the Terracentrics. And just as pitiable. And just as wrong.

Answer 15

Hi there.

First up, I reveal myself to be a Catholic.

It is the fault of the church hierarchy, not Darwin and not his followers. God's truth was revealed to Darwin, among others, like truth had been revealed to Galileo in an earlier time.

The correct response from the church hierarchy should have been one of humility - but they reacted with Pride instead, which has caused all the problems since. They should have accepted the truth and set about understanding what it was telling them about Gods methods and Gods creation, reinterpreting the Old Testament in the light of what was revealed.

Instead, they took the view that the Bible is the ONLY source of truth and anything that disagrees with a single word must be stopped. This was wrong-headed to the point of madness, no wonder we are half a joke these days.

Genesis describes an Adam and Eve. Genetically, for instance, we now know there was a single female source and single male source we all descend from. So there is truth there, but the story surrounding the truth is NOT literally true.

The answer? Accept in all humility that God (as St Paul for one has pointed out) is essentially unknowable to human minds, that there is a lot more truth to be revealed and when in doubt, the only reliable place to go is the Gospels. Everything NOT the Gospels is commentary and should be treated as such.

Regards, Steve.

PS As well as the Greeks, Muslim scholars had a theory of Evolution in the 12th century that was successfully suppressed. If only...