The understanding of God among religious persons and even the non-believers revolves around a supernatural being with enough power to control the universe. The people who believe in such teachings pray for divine interventions while the atheists assume nonchalance on the grounds of science proving such a force cannot possibly exist. Still, the different arguments posed by both believers and skeptics raise two questions: where did the changes begin? Are they reversible? A reading of David J. Pleins published work The Evolving God: Charles Darwin on the Naturalness of Religion provides a possible solution through the experiences of its subject. In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on a voyage aboard the HMS Beagle and visited territories across the world. The journey lasted five years and at each stage, Darwin made new discoveries about his personal beliefs and those of other persons set in different parts of the world. Apparently, as the author of The Evolving God reports, Darwin realized God is not constant at a global capacity and could change forms whenever the people saw fit. To that end, any forms of worship and religion became a combination of “belief and practice[s]” as the responses to all events solely relied on the foundations on which people grounded their social norms (Pleins 2).
First, a notable factor in Pleins’ The Evolving God is Charles Darwin’s personal beliefs that later became the standard against which he measured other peoples’ actions and convictions. On one hand, Darwin was “a sort of Christian” whose interest in religious buildings and artifacts stemmed from “mere curiosity” (2). Consequently, if Darwin were to enter a church or any other religious building, he would look out for anything interesting and not necessarily the religious teachings that typically take place in the same. Nonetheless, the man had basic understandings of Christianity because his sister would often recommend “books on the Bible” and “Gospel readings” for him to read (Pleins 32). On the other hand, the theorist was at the time a learned man with the “future prospect of distinguishing” himself in the field of Geology (Pleins 37). Hence, at a time when intellectual abilities defined civilization, Darwin was not only a civilized but also a distinguished man in his home country, and scientific knowledge formed the foundations in which he grounded his personal ideologies. To that end, the people Darwin encountered were subject to his pre-existing understanding of the world and the concept of being a rational human being.
Now, when Darwin faced the aboriginal tribes of New Zealand and Chile, the civilization and religious components of his person were significantly different from those of the natives. For instance, the tribes of New Zealand were apparently cannibals as they threatened to eat the men aboard the HMS Beagle only because they did not want the newcomers on their lands (Pleins 8). Additionally, the inhabitants of Concepcion in the Chile Islands reacted with intense fear to an earthquake that destroyed a Cathedral in their territory (Pleins 15). The problem with both accounts is twofold: the people depicted their uncivilized nature and at the same time, revealed their flawed belief systems. The consumption of human flesh encompasses murder and in civilized societies, the killing of other people, for food nonetheless, is an act of savagery. Accordingly, Darwin’s remarks about the tribes in New Zealand were that the region was “not a pleasant place” (Pleins 8). Similarly, the misplaced notions of earthquakes as the works of a divine being among the native tribes in Concepcion showed their lack of knowledge of natural occurrences. Again, from Darwin’s perspective, there already was a “geological explanation” for the earthquake, and because witchcraft was not part of the same, the theorist promptly asserted, “witchcraft begins where knowledge stops” (Pleins 15-16).
In conclusion, it is apparent that changes began with civilization, and they are irreversible as long as people conform to new ideologies that eradicate their previous understandings and reactions to different phenomena. Concurrently, in contemporary times, evolution is still taking place, as there are people who believe there God exists and others who need more convincing. The problem is, there is no method of telling the direction of the pattern: did all people believe in a deity before some changed or it was vice versa, and there was no religion in the first place.
Works Cited
Pleins, J. David. The Evolving God: Charles Darwin on the Naturalness of Religion. 1st. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Print.
