This study will examine the significance of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in terms of its impact on politics and religion in the author's time as well as in the last years of the twentieth century. The study will argue that the book has been, in the first place, drastically simplified by those who would either use it for their own purposes or try to diminish its importance out of fear.
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 principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called Natural Selection (Darwin 76).
Ironically, politicians and religious leaders used Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest for a wide range of purposes. It is commonly believed that Darwin was used only by ruthless atheists who sought to promulgate a philosophy in which anything the powerful d...