system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What did atheists believe before the theory of evolution?

Nowadays it is accepted among scientists that the most plausible explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on this planet is evolution. The idea of evolution existed before Darwin such as Lamarck's theory of evolution, but it was only after Darwin that our modern understanding took hold. What did prior atheists of which there were many think about this big problem concerning the breathtaking complexity of life? Even Richard Dawkins said, "I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859 when Darwin’s *Origin of Species* was published".

**Note: I am aware that evolution not being true doesn't automatically mean that there is a god, but I am just curious as to what did the atheists think before evolution was presented.**
gpt
The obvious route would seem to be that we didn't have sufficient knowledge to explain the complexity of life. For example, while not an atheist per se, Spinoza, in the 17th century, rejected divine teleology, so regarding the complexity of biology, he simply said that it surpasses contemporary human understanding:

>Nobody as yet knows the structure of the body so accurately as to explain all its functions, not to mention that in the animal world we find much that far surpasses human sagacity... they do not know what the body can do, or what can be deduced solely from a consideration of its nature, and experience abundantly shows that from the laws of its nature many things occur which they would never have believed possible except from the direction of mind.