by Mohamed Samir

Created on: May 08, 2011   Last Updated: May 11, 2011

Ever since man evolved into a conscious being, he has constantly wondered about his origin. In his intellectual childhood, the question was answered by biblical teachings. In the west, until 19th century, Christian theology formed the basis of Theory of Creationism which states:­

(1) that the World is of short duration, at the most 5757 years old.

(2) that the World is fixed and not changing.
(3) that the created species are constant, and do not evolve into other species.
(4) that the Perfect world is explicable only by omnipotent and beneficent creator.
(5) that the creation of man was special and apart from other created things.

This was the view held in the west till 1859 when the modern theory of evolution was introduced by Charles Darwin in his work titled "On the Origin of Species". There are two basic points to this theory;

(a) evolution is taking place on earth 
(b) and it is driven by natural selection.

How did he arrive at these two components of evolution? It is interesting to know. From 1835-36, Darwin went on a voyage in the South Atlantic and Pacific, which provided ample opportunity for him to observe various species on land. He was struck by the variety within each species at a particular geographical area. This gave him the idea of lack of fixity of species; rather species are changing into one another. Then he observed humans cross breeding various animals selectively to improve species. He understood that in an environment controlled by man, selection is provided by man; but who provides the selection process in the natural environment of species?

In 1838, Darwin was influenced by the essay "On the Principle of Population", anonymously published by Malthus, in which he stated theory’s law: only those able to produce deserve to survive, those who lived off the rich and produced nothing, all assistance to them must stop. This gave Darwin the idea of selection of the fittest by Nature, or survival of the fittest. This evolutionary work shocked people, who so far knew only Creationism. Darwin was joined by Ernest Heckle and T. H. Huxley, in his atheist theory which declared that man must have evolved from an ape-like ancestor, thus putting man in the phylogenetic tree of the animal kingdom. This marked the end of the anthropocentrism of the bible and the rise of atheism in England. Prior to this, Germany and France had already rejected religion. Later on, Karl Marx also

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