Evolution and The God Delusion

I recently watched an old Channel 4 documentary series on the life of Charles Darwin (You can watch them here if you are interested).  Most people will be aware of Darwin and the impact his work on evolution by natural selection made on society.  What this documentary made quite clear is that not many people are actually aware of the detail in which he proposed his theory and the large amount of evidence that has followed to backup his claims.  After all before seeing the truth about how life evolved, Darwin was religious too.  For a man such as Darwin to turn his back on his faith the evidence must have been compelling.

Richard Dawkins

The documentary was a 3 part series presented by the well known biologist, author and outspoken atheist, Richard Dawkins.  The first two parts present the evidence that all life has evolved from primitive micro organisms and branched off into more complex life culminating in the diverse array of life we see today.  It also states that we humans evolved from the same common ancestor as chimpanzees and preceding that all apes.  In fact we are Apes falling under the same evolutionary classification as all known great apes.  It is interesting to see the skulls of early man shown as we evolved, each with small changes over the last (There is an interesting series on the BBC called Planet of the Apemen that shows some of our ancestors in detail).  All of these findings fit together to well to be coincidence are backed up not only through fossil dating but also by thorough DNA testing that demonstrates the small changes in DNA as evolution progressed.  So why do people continue to believe that we were created as we are now in 'God's image' it almost defies common sense.  You need only look at the remnants of evolution such as the human appendix, blind spots in our vision or wisdom teeth.  These features imply humans are far from perfect and why would a creator include them.

The third episode in the series focused on this head in the sand approach taken by religion when presented with human evolution.  They dismiss the evidence to support it with ludicrous claims such as 'well you haven't seen evolution happening so It's not true!'.  You could counteract this argument to say religion is false in the same way, the difference is there is absolutely no evidence to support God, apart from an extremely old book that may as well go in the fiction section with Lord of the Rings.  I know i'd sooner believe in hobbits, elves and dwarfs as Moses parting the waves and Jesus turning water into wine.  The person who I most sympathised with in the series of short interviews Dawkins gave was with the Archbishop of Canterbury.  I got the impression that he was embarrassed to answer some of the questions that were posed, I think because he knew they were true but was unable to acknowledge them.

The part of the documentary that made me laugh was when Richard Dawkins was reading out his hate mail which mostly read along the lines of "I hope you f**king die slow blasphemer" and my personal favourite "I hope you get hit by a church van tonight and you die slowly".  Is this the way of religion? to wish death on those that do not share your views? With some people it seems so.  This is why Dawkins has been so vocal about religion in recent years because it breeds contempt for those who do not have the same faith and in turn violence.

I myself was brought up a Roman Catholic and was a regular church goer up until I was about 17-18, I would go every week and sometimes more than that.  I didn't particularly enjoy it but I was taught it was the right thing to do and not knowing any better I did as I was told.  Thinking back I wonder why that people have to worship every week, is it to appease 'God', is it to keep him sweet so you get a nice shiny seat in 'heaven'.  The sheer amount of time spent learning about religion in my youth only to find out later that it appeared to be mostly nonsense does make me a bit angry.  I can remember the exact moment that I became an apostate.  When I was a 19 year old student I went to a Christian Union gathering mainly on the promise of free food.  The food was good but the company was not.  The stories I was told were ridiculous to say the least.  One person supposedly 'fell off a cliff and was caught by God or Jesus'.  What actually happened was that they luckily landed on a lower shelf, there was no meaning in it just a slice of good fortune, but no according to him it was definitely an act of God.  Before this event he apparently didn't believe in God at all which makes it even more perplexing.  I had been aware of most of the scientific principles that counteracted most religious views but had never really given it much thought, when confronted with this barrage of extreme religious nonsense it suddenly made sense.  I can remember coming home and ranting to my housemate for hours about it.

I am still open to the option that there might be a creator somewhere that began the Universe and allowed the laws of physics to play out as the Universe formed, but I find it very unlikely.  In any case I am convinced that life as we know it was not part of any grand design by an intelligent being. So I leave you with a couple of quotes that sum up my thoughts on the matter quite well.

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all... I personally resent it bitterly." - Isaac Asimov

"when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." - Robert Pirsig