HIS102Y1 Lecture : Semester 2 History Reading Notes.docx
Document Summary
The science and soul of the modern age. In biology the modern revolution began in the 19th cent. Darwin"s theory of evolution (1859) and gregory mendel"s theory of genetics, which was largely ignored until the end of the century. The organisms whose variations best fit them to the environment are the ones who are most likely to survive, reproduce, and pass those desirable variations on to the next generation. Ever since darwin first published the origin of species, evolutionary theory"s implications for traditional religious beliefs have been endlessly debated. Many people, both past and present, have assumed that evolution would utterly eliminate all of religion"s claims to validity; there have been many that feared this idea and a few that welcomed it. Still others have spent many hours speculating on the relationship between evolution and religion, only to develop shaky syntheses or to give up, calling the problem insoluble.
