Charles Darwin

by Andrew Norman

  Egyptians believed in the afterlife, though in early times only the pharaoh and those noblemen whom he particularly favoured could achieve it. Later, however, it was believed that the afterlife was available to all.

  Confucianism. Confucius (551–479BC) was a Chinese philosopher who emphasized the importance of justice, sincerity, and morality. However, by the time of the Han dynasty (206BC-AD220), ‘Confucianism’ had evolved in such a way that both the emperor and the hierarchy of officialdom were regarded as having been divinely appointed; they worshipped the Sun, Heaven, Earth and other ‘nature gods’, whereas ‘ancestor worship’ was practised by the people.

  Buddhism. Buddha (c.563–483BC) was born the son of a king in northern India. Having achieved ‘enlightenment’, he proceeded to teach that existence necessarily involves suffering; that the principal cause of suffering is desire, and that the suppression of suffering can be achieved by the suppression of desire. If so, then a state of Nirvana is achieved, which is individual extinction and absorption into the supreme spirit.

  Christianity. Jesus Christ (c.7–2BC-c.AD30)2, who was born in Bethlehem in what is now the State of Israel, allegedly performed miraculous healings and exorcisms before being executed by the Romans. Shortly afterwards he was ‘resurrected’ from the dead and ascended into Heaven. According to St Matthew (apostle and gospel writer), Christ was ‘the Son of the living God’,3 who, according to St John (also an apostle and gospel writer), declared, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh to the Father, but by me.’4 In other words, a belief in Christ was necessary in order to gain access to Heaven where Christ’s father, God, dwelt.

  Islam. Mohammed (or Muhammad, c.AD570-c.AD632) was an Arab prophet from Mecca – capital of what is now Saudi Arabia. In about the year 610 he claimed that the Koran – the sacred book of Islam – had been divinely revealed to him by the angel Jibra’el (Gabriel). Mohammed was the messenger for, and voice of Allah, the creator of all things (including the Koran).

  * * *

  Although the basic tenets of only a handful of the world’s religions have been outlined above, from the samples certain patterns are already becoming discernible.

  Firstly, God is invisible to the human senses. However, believers often choose to depict god as an object familiar to them in their everyday lives, for example:

  Hindus. Brahma is traditionally portrayed with four heads and four arms. The god, Ganesha, has the head of an elephant, four arms, and two legs. The goddess Kali, is depicted in human form and has either four or ten arms.

  Egyptians. Gods are typically depicted in humanoid form, occasionally with variations. For example, the god Anubis has the head of a jackal; Sobek takes the form of a crocodile, or of a man with the head of a crocodile; Bastet of a cat.

  Buddhists. Buddha is depicted as a human being, as is Kwan Yin, goddess of compassion.

  Greeks. Their gods Zeus (the king of the gods) and Aphrodite (goddess of love and beauty), together with hundreds of other deities, all have humanoid forms.

  Romans. The same is true of their gods as for the Greeks.

  Christians. The Christian god (Yahweh in the Holy Bible) is usually depicted in humanoid form.

  Mohammedans. Islam rejects the characterization of god (Allah) either by portraiture or sculpture.

  Australian aborigines. The Rainbow Snake god is depicted with the head of a kangaroo, the body of a python, and the tail of a crocodile; Altjira – the Sky God – as a large bird with the feet of an emu; and Adnoartine – the Lizard God – as its namesake, the lizard.

  Conclusion

  In his notebook, in or around the year 1837, Darwin made a sketch of an evolutionary tree, and in the 1859 edition of Origin, there appeared a more detailed ‘Tree of Life’ image. Had he been so minded, he might equally well have created a similar Tree, in order to depict how each of these various religions had evolved. The conclusion which is drawn from the above account is that:

  1. Many different gods have appeared at many different times throughout human history.

  2. Each god proclaims his own particular idiosyncratic message.

  3. Each god is seemingly oblivious of, or hostile to, the presence of another.

  4. Each god is absolutely convinced that his message is the correct one.

  5. This, therefore, is a recipe for unending human conflict.

  From whence did these disparate gods originate?

  Could it be that man simply invented them? And if he did, then surely he may be forgiven. After all, how else could he make intelligible a world of earthquake and thunderstorm; tempest and drought; disease, famine, and conflict – events over which he had little or no control. Surely, then, it was only natural for him to long for a supernatural and omnipotent being who could offer himself and his family peace, security, and a good harvest each year; even the prospect of an afterlife? But what of the evidence of divine miracles, of god speaking to people or appearing to them in visions? Surely this cannot be lightly dismissed.

  With the advances in psychiatry which have occurred in the twentieth/twenty-first centuries has come a realization that man is not a wholly rational being, and that the phenomena which he ‘observes’ or ‘experiences’ in the outside world, may, in fact, originate from within himself, in the form of delusions – idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument.5

  The incidence in the population, as a whole, of those who experience delusions is estimated to be in the order of one person in every 30,000.6 The cause of delusional disorder is unknown but it is sometimes associated with schizophrenia.

  A hallucination is defined as an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.7 It may be something heard – an ‘auditory hallucination’, or something seen – a ‘visual hallucination’. Hallucinations occur in severe disorders of mood, in organic disorders (relating to a bodily organ or organs) such as epilepsy, and in dissociative states (where a component of mental activity is split off to act as an independent part of mental life)8 such as amnesia. ‘Third-person’ auditory hallucinations, where the person hears a voice which is making comments about him or her, is strongly suggestive of the presence of schizophrenia in that person.9

  In addition, hallucinations may be induced by certain naturally occurring hallucinogenic substances including psilocin and psilocybin, found in the small genus of (‘magic’) mushrooms known as psilocybe; and tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive component of cannabis and found in the plant of that name. Some modern-day drugs are also hallucinogenic, including lysergic acid diethylamine (LSD) and amphetamine. Therefore, a person is not necessarily telling a lie when he or she reports upon either hearing, seeing or believing in a god, if the vision or the voice upon which his beliefs are based has originated from within his or her own mind. Alternatively, it is possible that some who claim to witness ‘divine revelations’, do so either to create or to embellish a story, in the hope of achieving fame and high status amongst their followers, or for pecuniary gain.

  It seems highly likely, in the light of this, that further examples of such man-manufactured gods may be expected to make their appearance in the future!

  What were Darwin’s views on the origin of religious belief?

  In his book The Descent of Man Darwin states that:

  The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal; and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man’s reason, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel an
d malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.10

  … until the faculties of imagination, curiosity, reason, &c., had been fairly well developed in the mind of man, his dreams would not have led him to believe in spirits [supernatural beings],11 any more than in the case of a dog.12

  In other words, man’s belief in ‘spiritual agencies’ – i.e. ‘gods’ – only commenced when his mental faculties had become sufficiently well developed to permit it, which is tantamount to saying that god is exclusively a product of man’s imagination.

  NOTES

  1. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  2. AD is the abbreviation for Anno Domini – the year of Our Lord – i.e. the year of Christ’s birth, and BC is the abbreviation for ‘Before Christ’. However, scholars are uncertain about Christ’s dates.

  3. Gospel of St Matthew: 16, verse 16.

  4. Gospel of St John: 14, verse 6.

  5. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  6. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, p.326.

  7. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Gelder, Harrison and Cowen. Shorter Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, pp.7–8.

  10. Darwin, The Descent of Man, p.682.

  11. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  12. Darwin, op cit., p.117.

  Chapter 32

  The Dinosaurs

  Darwin was aware from the fossil evidence, including that which he himself had unearthed, that dinosaurs had once roamed the Earth, and he would have marvelled at the large number of new species which have been discovered since his time, together with fossilized dinosaur nests, eggs, faeces, footprints, and even imprints of their tails.

  The period when these awe-inspiring and seemingly invincible creatures existed upon the Earth spanned virtually the whole of the Jurassic and all of the Cretaceous periods of geological time – i.e. from 205 million to 65 million years ago. However, whereas dinosaur fossils from these eras are to be found in abundance, such fossils are conspicuously absent from rocks of the succeeding Paleogene era (65 million to 56 million years ago). This indicates that dinosaurs became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous (from the Latin creta meaning ‘chalk’) period.

  The so-called K-T Boundary is a geological stratum which marks the boundary between rocks of the Cretaceous and Paleogene eras. (The K derives from the German words kreide, meaning chalky and zeit, meaning period; and the T from Tertiary – the term used for the succeeding Paleogene and Neogene eras.) What comes as a surprise, is that the layer of clay or rock, just a few feet in thickness, which in many locations demarcates the K-T Boundary, is rich in iridium – an element which is rare on Earth, but commonly found in extraterrestrial bodies. The significance of this will be discussed shortly.

  It was in 1677 that Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, published a description of a fossilized bone – believed to be part of the femur of a Megalosaurus, a large carnivorous bipedal dinosaur of the mid-Jurassic period1, which he had discovered in Cornwall. This was the first dinosaur bone to be described in the literature. Subsequently, when the fossilized bones of many more similar types of creature were discovered, palaeontologist Professor Richard Owen (Darwin’s former opponent in the ‘Great Oxford Debate’) recognized that these bones had certain distinctive features in common and classified them (in 1842) under the heading dinosauria (from the Greek, deinos – terrible and sauros – lizard).

  Historically, it was from the archosaurs (ruling reptiles) that dinosaurs on the one hand and crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators, caymans) on the other were descended. Egg laying reptiles, dinosaurs tended to have long tails, long necks and small heads. Their bodies were covered in scales composed of keratin, a durable, fibrous protein which provided, to varying degrees, waterproofing, and protection against predators. However, keratin is a poor insulator of the body when compared to fur and feathers, which is a point of great significance, as will shortly be seen.

  The average size of a dinosaur approximated to that of a sheep. However, a full-grown specimen might range in size from the 15-inch-long Parvicursor, to the colossal, 120-foot-long Argentinosaurus, which weighed in at in excess of 100 tons. Dinosaurs differed from other reptiles in that their thigh bones (femurs) tended to point vertically downwards from the body (rather than to splay out laterally, like those of lizards), a feature which kept their bellies well off the ground. There were also other minor skeletal differences between the two types of creature. To date, approximately 1,000 different types of dinosaur have been identified (from their fossilized bones), and more are being discovered each year.

  What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?

  Darwin puzzled over why dinosaurs, which included the largest and most powerful land animals ever to have lived, became extinct. Mere size and strength, as he pointed out in Origin, was no guarantor of survival.

  Disease?

  Some have argued that the dinosaurs were victims of a global pandemic caused by some unknown variety of virus or bacteria. However, at the time in question, which was the end of the Cretaceous era (demarcated by the so-called K-T Boundary), the single super-continent, known as Pangea, had already begun to split into several distinct entities, which makes a worldwide pandemic unlikely, because of the difficulties of transmission of the infective agent.

  It is also commonly observed that if a species is exposed to an infectious disease, a certain portion of individuals belonging to that species are likely to develop an immunity to that disease. Myxomatosis did not destroy all the rabbits in Australia in the 1950s, and the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19 did not destroy all human life on Earth.

  Climate too wet or too dry?

  If it was the case that drought or flood had caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, then this would surely have also rendered extinct the mammals which co-existed with them.

  Climate too hot or too cold?

  In June 2011 the journal Science published an article by Robert A. Eagle (of the California Institute of Technology) and others, in which the authors described using ‘clumped isotope thermometry to determine [lifetime] body temperatures from the fossilized teeth of large Jurassic sauropods [very large, quadrupedal, herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails, small heads, and massive limbs].2 The technique is based on the fact that the degree to which 13C and 18O (isotopes of carbon and oxygen respectively) tend to bond together is temperature related. Therefore, by measuring the extent to which these isotopes are found ‘clumped together’ in a dinosaur’s bones and teeth (where they are deposited as these structures develop), the body temperature of the dinosaur can be ascertained.

  The dinosaurs in question were Brachiosauraus (weighing in at between thirty-eight and fifty tons), and Camarasaurus (thirty-five to fifty tons). These creatures, so the authors discovered, maintained a body temperature of between 36°C to 38°C.3 Until proved otherwise, it may therefore be assumed that all dinosaurs operated within this range of body temperature. The fact that dinosaurs were highly active, and could run for considerable distances at considerable speed – as is attested to by records of their fossilized footprints – also lends weight to the theory that these creatures were endothermic [dependent on, or capable of the internal generation of heat].4

  The question is now asked – how does this optimal body-temperature range for dinosaurs compare with that of other creatures, for example, other species of reptiles, and mammals?

  i. Reptiles of the non-dinosaur variety

  In 1965, Bayard H. Brattstrom of the Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, published an article entitled ‘Body Temperatures of Reptiles’ in which he observed the following variations in the body temperature of snakes to be 9°C to 38°C; lizards 11°C to 46°C; US al
ligator 26°C to 37°C.5

  ii. Mammals

  The modern-day rat and shrew have a normal body temperature of between 38°C and 39°C, and it is likely (though not absolutely certain) that the same was true of the small varieties of mammal – shrew-like or rat-like creatures, that co-existed with the dinosaurs.

  The question arises – would an unusual increase or decrease in temperature of the Earth’s surface be responsible for annihilating the dinosaurs?

  An inordinate and prolonged rise in temperature could undoubtedly have killed the dinosaurs. But if this was the case, both the mammals – whose fur would have made them even more vulnerable to overheating – and the non-dinosaur reptiles would have experienced a similar fate. On the other hand, what if there had been, at the time of the K-T Boundary, an inordinate and prolonged fall in temperature?

  Mammals are insulated by a covering of hair or fur (short, fine, soft hair) – which is composed of keratin (the same durable, fibrous, protein material of which the scales of dinosaurs and other reptiles is composed). This acts by trapping pockets of air, and thereby enables heat to be retained in a similar manner to that by which double-glazed windows insulate a house. Mammals would therefore have been well able to withstand such cold conditions. So, too, would the non-dinosaur reptiles, which (for reasons described above) were able to operate at bodily temperatures so low that no dinosaur would have been able to survive them. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that, in such conditions, those mammals which had co-existed with the dinosaurs not only survived the Cretaceous era but thrived and diversified in the succeeding Paleogene era.

  The problem for a dinosaur was that, whereas a mammal is cocooned within a furry, heat-retaining outer layer, this creature was more akin to a radiator, where heat continually and inexorably leached out from its body through keratinous scales which afforded virtually no insulation whatsoever. Paradoxically, some of the largest dinosaurs, such as the gigantic sauropods, were even more vulnerable than their smaller cousins, on account of their elongated necks and tails (the surface area/volume ratio of the neck and tail combined, exceeding that of the body by a factor of 3.5).