I never really thought about the conflict between Darwin’s natural selection theory and the idea of intellectual creator (God). Being raised in an extremely religious family, I was told since I was very little that the aim of this life is to do what God ordered us to do (known as good actions) and to believe in what the holy book says. Many things from the holy book or religion didn’t make sense to me and I often questioned how we could actually trust a book and live our lives based on the things that’s written in there. Although I questioned many things that came from the holy book, I actually never questioned the existence of God. I believed that the idea of intellectual creator was a fact and that God had created this whole world for a reason. Although I never succeeded in finding out what that reason was, I still believed that there was a purpose for why we all ended up here and that we are all being watched by God every moment of our lives.
My belief in God was never shaken by any means and I strongly believe that there is definitely a God out there until I took a Biological anthology class which talked about Darwin and his theories about human origin.
The idea of humans evolving from apes was amazingly interesting and the evidence presented by anthropologists and scientists was engaging. As I mentioned in my previous post I loved this class patiently and went to class excited to learn more and more as the idea of evolution opened my mind to other possibilities about our origin and the creation of this whole world. For the first time in my entire life I started doubting God and questioned whether there really is an intellectual creator who designed this world for a specific purpose. I had actually been really confused about life and death since they both used to have actual meanings when I believed in God but started to fade away as I went deeper into learning about evidence that supported the idea of evolution of humans. While there were many evidence linked to the existence of non-modern humans in the past and the discoveries of more skeletons belonging to human ancestors added up to my doubts about God and religion, I did not loose my faith. I feel like deep down I still believed in God and that the creation of this world had a purpose. Till this day I still question many things about the creation of this world and our origin. I think that many people have these questions in mind and I believe that being exposed to different ideas and theories about how we became the species that we are today can open our mind and be an encouragement to search for answers. Although taking a biological anthropology class made me doubt my faith and old beliefs, I think that it made me learn even more about my religion by forcing me to go back to the source and search for answers.
At one point in my college career, I went through something similar to what you describe here. I was raised in a very conservative, very Christian household where the Bible was taught to be 100% factual. When I moved out on my own to attend college, my faith as well was shaken by almost every class that I took my freshman year. Unlike you, my beliefs did change, however. I would urge everybody to challenge themselves in this way. Ignorantly believing in something is dangerous, in my opinion. One needs to know why they believe something, and must question what they believe, not to undermine it necessarily, but so that they have a firm understanding of what they believe and why. This is in no way trying to convert people, I just really think that people need to know what it is they believe, and it is rarely put under intense scrutiny at home if it was simply what they were taught while growing up.
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