To what extent did the publication of ‘Origin of Species’ undermine the power of religion between 1859-1969?
In the context of the years 1859 – 1969 to what extent did the publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’ undermine the power of established religion in Europe?
Obviously I'm not expecting a whole essay answers, but anyone have ideas about arguments/facts I can use or where to start? Thanks in advance :)
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Read a fairly-recent historical book titled "Victorian Sensation", by James A. Secord, and you will find that all the initial controversy and culture shock over Evolution really happened in 1844, with an anonymous book called "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." Reaction to Darwin's "Origin of Species" was a pale re-run. (I once went through ca. 1860 issues of a review journal for British Catholics, the "Dublin Review," and the review of "Origin" could be summed up: Mr. Darwin has a most ingenious idea, and has presented evidence for it but not completely proved it; and you of course have to be tentative and careful about what you say about the origin of the human species. Considering the excesses of Social Darwinism, this latter caveat wasn't a mistake.)
There are three volumes in this respondent's library which may be of help.
All have a certain degree of fundamentalist Christian religious background to them.
The authors are trying to explain in some cases 'to their own' the fact Evolution does not necessarily push the concept of a 'Creator' out of the process. There is the explanation that even the religious leaders of the day contradicted themselves while trying to explain 'creation' in a biblically literal sense. One such explanation was that God in working on the world the first time around made some mistakes and wiped out all life (I think this was to explain the remnants of dinosaur and their peers) and then started all over again. Theological difficulty with this raises the question about a perfect and all-knowing Being making mistakes.
In looking at these three volumes read the autobiographical information about the authors and also, check out the sources they cite in their notes and bibliographies as well.
There's no doubt that secularization made great strides in those years, and that science was a key reason for secularization. The proliferation of rational explanations was inevitably at the expense of creation myths. Religion has persisted of course, but secularization had already made such strides by the late 19th century--soon after darwin's book--that Nietzsche proclaimed the death of god.
Hardly at all. The idea that every word in the bible was literally true was dying out some time before Darwin published his seminal work.