Significance of The Origin of Species

In the second place, those who would use the book for their own purposes are from very different parts of the political and religious spectra, meaning that the book is open to contrasting interpretations.

The book in its entirety rarely enters or entered the debate over Darwin's ideas on evolution and their meaning to religion and politics. The debate generally focuses on the section dealing with the "survival of the fittest" (Darwin 43). Even this section normally finds itself simplified down to the most rudimentary thought that the animal kingdom---including human beings---evolves through one process, that which leads the strongest of any species to survive and thrive. However, Darwin arrives at the notion of the "survival of the fittest" only after a subtle and cautious process of examination and analysis of a very limited fauna base. He concludes:

If variations useful to [the preservation and survival of] any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life, and from the strong princip

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icies simply by arguing that they had risen to the top of the heap by natural selection, and deserved to use their power as they saw fit, for the good of humanity. This included the justification of sweatshops, union-busting, "goon squads and strike-breaking massacres" and "tenements without sanitation." Both in Darwin's time and in our own time almost a century and a half later, some religious leaders have had far kinder things to say about Darwin and evolution than might be expected. In Darwin's time, some religious leaders used their simplistic interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution to support the socioeconomic status quo, arguing that success was a natural reward for virtue, and poverty the natural result of laziness. Ruthless capitalists, their paid-off politicians and self-described Christians came together in distorting Darwin's evolutionary theory to support the status quo in which so many people suffered as the industrial economy grew: Curiously enough, there were religious sanctions, too, for had not material things always been corrupting to man, and was it not therefore self-evident that the lower classes had to be kept poor to be kept virtuous---and . . . could not the virtuous and industrious among the poor e
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Approximate Word count = 1371
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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