by trace elements

Created on: September 18, 2009

Can God and Darwinism coexist?

Do we have a chicken and egg situation here? When asked what comes have a definitive answer to, as both need to be in existence in order for the other to be! So to answer can God and Darwinism coexist, you need to be open minded and look at all possibilities.

When defining God you can use many definitions: God as a noun means; the being which made the universe, the Earth and its people and is believed to have an effect on all things (especially in Christian, Jewish and Muslim belief) (1) or a spirit or being believed to control some part of the universe or life and often worshipped for doing so, or a representation of this spirit or being (the ancient Greek gods and goddesses) (1).

So God is a being or spirit which had some hand in creation, and should be worshipped because of this. This is an entity that can not be seen or felt, but which we believe in regardless of these facts. All religions give thanks and praise God for the wonderful things which have come to pass. However, God can also be blamed for the bad things which happen, as in it is God's will.

We all at some point or another in our lives question God and the actions we feel are these entities responsibilities. We can even fall away and say we do not believe in God, because of consequences of actions or when we loose someone dear. We are trying to rationalise what has happened and what is the purpose of our lives. This does not mean that there is no God or higher being, but that we are moving forward ourselves and trying to make sense of life and its meaning.

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, at which time religion was not so prescriptive in the British Isles. He was brought up an Anglican, which means of the Church of England (2). He was born into a family of free thinkers, who encouraged the same of their children. This he carried through to his own family, but became worried about his children's health due to having married a cousin. He felt that the dilution of the genes could cause problems. He felt late in life he would probably consider himself an agnostic, which means someone who does not know, or believes that it is impossible to know, whether a god exists(1). This may have been as a result of his discoveries on the Galapagos Islands, and after the death of his ten year old daughter Anne. As is often the case such discoveries can make us question what we already know and how we know such things.

He published his findings and discussed the

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