What would be different if natural selection was discovered in the year 500?

Bottle_of_Smoke

Would religions be much different?

Would Christianity have been killed off or made stronger?

Would Islam be more powerful because the Quran would have been written with knowledge of Natural Selection, or would Islam even exist?

Somewhat related -In the future will Abrahamic faiths dominate or will religion go down the Scientology route due to NS rendering a lot of the bible's basis obselete ?

Thoughts...

Red Hand

I'm not sure. Origin of the species was of its time, and remember there was a huge build-up to that book, with an increasing interest in the discovery and classfication of animals at that time amongst a certan class. In the year 500, at least in the West (by that I mean where the Western Roman Empire was), I'm not sure how relevant such theory would have been. There was no printing and people depended on trusted philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato for education (those few that could afford an education). Few universities...methinks the book would have had to come in somewhere like China if youu wanted an impact, and that wasn't exactly open to new ideas either.

PDN

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote:

Somewhat related -In the future will Abrahamic faiths dominate or will religion go down the Scientology route due to NS rendering a lot of the bible's basis obselete ?

Current trends are that secularism is increasing in Europe and North America, but Christianity and Islam are growing massively in the Global South. Simple demographics and birthrates mean that, even if Christian & Islam conversions were to cease tomorrow, if these religions retain their children then Christians and Muslims will steadily increase as a percentage of the world's population.

18AD

The person who discovered it would have been killed.
Witch!