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Creation and evolution are both very old ideas.
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They are both profoundly religious ideas.
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The Bible has spoken of creation by the Word of God’s command since the most ancient of times.
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Pagan religions back to at least the time of Babylon have taught some version of evolution.
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Believers in the more modern religions of atheism and secular humanism have no alternative but to accept it.
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There is no other foundation of their faith.
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Evolutionary concepts appeared in some early Greek writings, e.g., in the works of Thales Empedocles, Anaximander, and Aristotle.
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Under the restraining influence of the church, no evolutionary theories developed during some 15 centuries of the Christian era to challenge the belief in special creation and the literal interpretation of the first part of Genesis, however much data was accumulated that was to be utilized by later theorists.
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With the growth of scientific observation and experimentation, there began to appear from about the middle of the 16th centaury glimpses of the theory of evolution that emerged in the mid 19th centaury.
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The invention of the microscope, making possible the study of reproductive cells and the growth of the science of embryology, was a factor in overthrowing hampering theories founded in false ideas of the reproductive process; studies in classification (taxonomy or systematic) and anatomy, based on dissection, were also influential.
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Linnaeus, in his later years, shoed an inclination toward belief in the mutability of species as a result of his observations of the many variations among species.
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Buffon, on the basis of his work in comparative anatomy, suggested the influence of use and disuse in molding the organs of vertebrate animals.
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Lamarck was the first to present a clearly stated evolutionary theory, but because it included the inheritance of acquired characteristics as the operative force of evolution, his whole theory was ridiculed and discredited for many years.
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Although special creation of each species was the prevalent belief even among scientist in the first half of the 10th centaury, the evidence in favor of evolution had by that time been uncovered.
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It remained for someone to assemble and interpret the evidence and to formulate as “seienfically credible” theory.
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This was accomplished simultaneously by A.R. Wallace and Charles Robert Darwin, who set forth the concepts that, came to be known as “Darwinism”.
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In 1859 first edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
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The influence of this evolutionary theory upon scientific thought and experimentation cannot be overestimated,
