Page 40 - The Religion of Darwinism

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Anaximander even wrote a poem
called "On Nature," which is the first
literary work to contain a theory of
evolution. In this poem he wrote
that creatures arose from slime that
had been dried by the sun. He
assumed that the first animals were
covered with prickly scales and lived
in the seas. As these fish-like
creatures evolved, they moved onto
land, shed their scaly coverings and
eventually became human
beings. 30 Philosophy books
explain how Anaximander
shaped the foundation of the theory
of evolution:
We find that Anaximander of Miletus (611-
546 B.C.) advanced the traditional
evolutionary idea, already quite common in
his day, that life first evolved from a type of
pre-biotic soup, helped along a bit by the
rays of the sun. He believed that the first
animals developed from sea slime which
had been evaporated by the sun rays. He
also believed that men were descended
from fish. 31 Top: Thales claimed that li-
ving things could generate
We meet an explanation similar to that themselves from water.
of Anaximander in Charles Darwin's book Bottom: The imaginary god
that Egyptians believed pro-
The Origin of Species. There is basically no
tected the Nile.
difference between the theory of evolution
proposed there (in spite of its pseudo-scientific claims) and the
account of the Milesian philosophers who lived in the pagan culture of
ancient Greece.
The most important element of Darwin's theory, the concept of
"natural selection," also has ancient Greek roots. The thesis that

THE RELIGION OF DARWINISM