evolution

I've been reading Susan Jacoby's latest book, "The Great Agnostic" about Robert Ingersoll, America's greatest freethinker and orator to date, and something struck me about evolution and made me see it in a different light.

Think of the Bible.  Allegedly, mankind is a descendant of Adam and Eve, two rather perfect beings in the Garden of Eden.  Perfect, at least, until they tasted the fruit of knowledge, and they were cast out of the Garden.  

Religious leaders for ages now have bemoaned the relative degeneration of mankind.  We used to be one step below the angels, but all of the modern technology and knowledge has somehow "debased" humanity.  Things appear to be getting worse and worse from a religious standpoint (most likely because more and more people are leaving the church).

Every new technological advance is sadly seen by the church as another level of decay and debauchery, and mankind must be "saved."

Now, contrast this attitude with the idea that, under evolution, humanity has been steadily advancing since growing up out of the muck and slime.  Mankind how reached a relative pinnacle of evolution and development that can produce wondrous works of art and beauty.  We are steadily evolving into the future, advancing, adapting, and improving.  It's amazing how far we have come, and the future is bright with possibility.

Perhaps I didn't say that very well.  I don't have the rhetorical flourishes that Ingersoll or Charles Darwin himself possessed, so perhaps it is best to transfer here the rather famous concluding statement from Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" in Darwin's own words.  I don't think I ever actually read this passage before:

There is a grandeur in this (evolutionary) view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone on cycling along according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

I dare say that mankind's only and best hope is to finally shed the intellectual straightjacket that is religious thought and superstition so that all people can come into the true light of knowledge and love.  There is plenty of room here for former believers

.