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So much for the clear breezy uplands of history and science. Down in the rain forest of actual human society, Darwin has had a more mixed reception. Strict fundamentalists in all three of the big Abrahamic religions regard his theories with loathing. The degree of loathing is different among the three faiths, being highest among , lowest among Jews, and intermediate among Christians. The loathing is real, though, and among some groups of believers, it is very intense. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, Darwin’s theories contradict the holy books, if those books are read with a close and literal meaning. In the second, the broad outlook on human nature implied by Darwinian ideas contradicts the notion of human exceptionalism, without which the Abrahamic religions lose their point. To put it crudely, those big old Western faiths see humanity as a Chosen Species, uniquely gifted by God with powers of moral discrimination and (though there are sectarian differences here) with the prospect of an afterlife. To modern biologists, informed by Darwin, we are merely another branch on Nature’s tree, our particular mental and social gifts in plain line of descent from homologues among the higher animals. http://www.takimag.com/1651/