Q: “What is it that changed the minds of people to become more accepting of atheism?”
I enjoyed reading your blog post because I think that it highlighted something that we did not really discuss in class about Darwin’s ideas. It does seem that a major consequence of Darwin’s idea was that society began to accept the idea of being an atheist.
I think the fact that people changed their minds about atheism relates to one of the main reasons why religion is popular in the first place. Most religions have a story of why humans exist, and what will happen once we die. In addition, humans are afraid of the unknown; this is exactly the reason why religion is so popular. Religious beliefs provide people with the feeling of security because it provides them with a purpose and the certainty of knowing what happens after death. There are many unknowns in our world, and most religions are able to provide answers to these unknowns.
As far as unknowns, the question of how humans were created is one of the most important unknowns that exists. For this reason, I think that Darwin’s ideas were able to use scientific evidence to prove an explanation of this unknown, and his ideas were the first that could give a scientific answer to the question of how humans were created. This leads to the idea that people began to accept atheism after Darwin’s ideas because before Darwin, there was no way to scientifically explain how humans were created. Many people accepted the ideas that religions provided as an explanation for the creation of humans because there was no other idea that could be proven.
Once Darwin’s ideas began to become accepted, people began to realize that some major religious ideas could be wrong. This is exactly why I believe that people began to accept atheism. Darwin’s ideas proved scientific evidence of why religious ideas could be incorrect. Before Darwin and other scientific breakthroughs, there was not much science that could disprove religious ideas. Once the idea of natural selection could be proven, I think people began to second-guess religion.
There are things that I like about religion, but I absolutely hate their exploitation of human uncertainty. Most people are extremely afraid of death, and I believe that certain religions, especially Christianity, take advantage of this human characteristic. I see things all the time that try to convert people into being Christian by saying that they will go to heaven if they choose to be Christian, but hell if they do not. This whole strategy turns into a type of scare tactic into getting people to convert to a certain religion. I do not believe that an all good, all powerful being like God would want people to be scared into obeying his standards. For me, religious values relate to things like peace and love, not fear mongering.
The idea that religions often use the exploitation of the fear of uncertainty to convert people relates back to your original question because Darwin’s ideas helped remove one of the human uncertainties that religions used. Even though I highly doubt it would ever happen, if someone were able to prove what happens after death scientifically, then I believe atheism would be accepted by people even more than religion was. With that said, I believe that religion will always exist.
What do you think about theories that combine Darwin’s ideas with religious ideas?
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