SCIENCE and RELIGION.
“Whoever wishes to become a philosopher will do well to pay attention to the history of science, and particularly to its warfare with theology.
With the exception of pure mathematics, every science has had to begin by fighting to establish its right to exist. Astronomy was condemned in the person of Galileo, geology in the person of Buffon. Scientific medicine was, for a long time, made almost impossible by the opposition of the Church to the dissection of dead bodies.
Darwin came too late to suffer penalties, but Catholics and the Legislature of Tennessee still regard evolution with abhorrence.
Each step has been won with difficulty, and each new step is still opposed, as if nothing were to be learnt from past defeats.”
– Bertrand Russell,
How to become a Philosopher.
Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species.
By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact.
Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.
Darwin considered it “absurd to doubt that a man might be an ardent theist and an evolutionist”.
Though reticent about his religious views, in 1879 he wrote,
“I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind”.
– Joy Kallivayalil.
