I'm a retired biology teacher so to me Origin of Species is in a class by itself. Certainly das Kapitol and Nietzsche's Ecce Homo had wide effects. But to my mind Darwin brought mankind out of the wilderness. We are animals like all the rest, and he proved it. He showed how clueless the Church was and nearly shared the fate of other great thinkers. Galileo merely showed that the Earth revolves around the sun and was almost burned at the stake, like Giordano Bruno. He was held in his villa the last 40 years of his life.

Another great book we can include which changed the world is Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. In younger days I taught that the cell was the basic unit of life. Not so! Dawkins showed us the gene is the basic unit, and it's a selfish gene, and the genome is as competitive as the jungle. The gene for blue eyes cares nothing about the human carrying the gene. It just cares about blue-eyed humans.

I discuss this in my latest book, Saving Gaia. We need a drastic change of consciousness, and to see ourselves in a different light. The Ole Time Religion has to go, let's hope it's not too late.

@Aristopus the one thing that religion did bring, which we might lose in materialism and science, is an emphasis on compassion and love, however misused it might have been. It’s a question not that religion has to go, but what should replace it.

Quite right. There were a few individuals that wanted to roll back the influence of religion. Justinian the Apostate, for instance, wanted to undo the work of Emperor Constantine after the latter imposed Christianity on all Europe. It can't be proven but he died in battle with a spear in the back, thrown by some Christian soldier.

@Aristopus note too that the key word here is not religion but philosophy. darwin wasn't an antitheist anyway, but imagine he was. there is plenty of philosophy from WAY before darwin that wasn't based on religion at all, and may still be quite valid! there is even philosophy that is based on religion but accidentally gets it right anyway (like a good deal of jewish law, which involves treating people fairly -- okay so the caveat is that the reason for the law is that god says so, but take god out of the picture and there is still a practical side to much of it, and i am not talking about stoning people to death for adultery -- i am talking about people taking care of each other).

g

@Aristopus i think we can agree that hypatia ever so slightly predates darwin, right? here are some things she said:

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

Regardless of our colour, race and religion – we are brothers

Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

not bad for someone who lived (and was murdered) in the fourth century ce.

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@genessa Very good! I'm quite familiar with her. Thanks for the quotes. Carl Sagan mentions Hypatia in the Cosmos series and how an abbot named Cyril, who is now a saint, inflamed his monk followers to waylay her and beat her to death unmercifully.

Will Durant also mentions her in The Are of Faith. How about this one? A stalker was bothering her as she did her chores at the great library of Alexandria. She cornered him, lifted up her dress and told him, this is what you're in love with and it's not so beautiful.

@Aristopus haha i hadn't heard that one. not only was she brilliant, she was quite a character. yes, i think i first heard of her from sagan. she has been a hero of mine ever since.

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@genessa Are you into Will Durant? I consider him the greatest historian of the century. He and his wife Ariel wrote The Story of Civilization, 16 tomes of 500 pages eacl. And they did it without a computer. What blows the mind, every fact he states is annotated.

@Aristopus i am only peripherally familiar but what i have seen i like. i am a big barbara tuchman fan. i may have misspelled her despite liking her lol. one n or two? i never remember!

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@genessa Ya know. Somebody should make a movie about her tragic life. It would blow a lot of minds, that's for sure. It would show what religious fanaticism does to people. Durant tells the story of "The Zealots". They were Christian monks living in Moor controlled Toledo in the 8th century. Knowing they would be beheaded, one at a time they marched into the Muslim council and called Mohammed every name in the book, including sex deviate. Durant writes "one by one the heads plopped into the basket." It's a good example of what religion can do to people.

@Aristopus hypatia's? i want to live long enough to write that script! as for examples, how do you pick only one? religion has been so BUSY screwing things up!

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Dhuzansky was part of the Evolutionary Synthesis of the late '20s. Genetics proved Darwin was right. Many great scientists thought religion had met its end. They underestimated the ability of religion to control information.

@Aristopus Which is precisely the point of my comment.

@KKGator Quite right. They have quite a few defense mechanisms. The devil tries to divert you from your faith, for instance. Say a prayer and don't listen to him. If you feel yourself being led away you must see a priest who will tell you what to do.

St. Augustine said in The City of God, if a novice see a fellow acolyte flirting with a pretty girl in church he must report him to his superiors to save his soul. They have a lot of tricks like that.

By far their most effective method to stay cohesive is to block off contrary information. It was once illlegal to teach a slave to read.

@Aristopus It was once illegal to distribute printed copies of the bible to the People. The church hierarchy believed that they should be the only ones with the right to read the book. Being caught printing and/or distributing bootleg copies of the bible could get you killed.

Careful. They're watching.

@chucklesIII NP