Page 39 - The Religion of Darwinism

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honor strange beliefs from pagan cultures, and moreover, try to
present them as a basis for scientific and rational thinking.

Pagan Greek Thinkers Sowed
the First Seeds of Darwinism

The precursor of Darwinist ideas was presented by Greek
Milesian philosophers who had no knowledge of the laws of physics,
chemistry or biology. One of the most important assertions of these
philosophers, among whom were Thales, Anaximander and
Empedocles, was that living things (animals, human beings and
plants) were generated spontaneously from inanimate elements such
as air, fire and water. According to this theory, the first living things
came into being suddenly and spontaneously in water, and after a
while some creatures left the water and adapted to living on land.
The first of these Milesian philosophers was Thales. He lived in a
coastal city and spent a long time in Egypt, where he was influenced
by the importance of the Nile river in the lives of its inhabitants. He
became obsessed with the idea that living things could generate
themselves from water, a conclusion he had reached by the use of
simple logic and inference but with no experiment or
scientific observation. Later, other Milesian
philosophers established theories on the basis of the
same logic.
After Thales the most important thinker was
his pupil Anaximander, who contributed two
important materialist doctrines to the annals of
western thought. The first of these is that the
universe has always existed and will continue to
exist into eternity. The second is an idea that had
begun to take shape in the time of Thales: that
Empedocles
living things evolved from one another.

THE ORIGINS OF THE RELIGION OF DARWINISM