Creation vs. Evolution
There is a long-standing cold war between followers of religion and atheists. One famous point on which they argue is whether we evolved or were placed here. I’m hoping to quell the flames a little with this informative article.
I want to start by saying that I’m not taking sides. While my belief system is based on atheist views, I am not telling you that atheists are right. The point here is to stop the arguing. I think the best approach is that of saying you’re both wrong. If you think that’s crazy and ridiculous I’ll just rely on the fact that you must at least be curious enough to wonder how I’m doing it. I just hope I don’t end up being too offensive. And so we go.
The religious (usually “Christian”) side of the argument centers on two concepts: that God placed man on the Earth, and that evolution isn’t even possible as all animals (and people) reproduce according to their kind. A mutation can’t really turn one species into another, can it? Most species even have different numbers of chromosomes, you can’t possibly say that Down Syndrome is the cause of that! Well, look at dogs. We have so many different dog breeds and they all look different. They may all be of the same species, but we bred them from wolves to begin with, over a period far less than life is supposed to have existed.
How did we get complex organs, like the digestive tract and nervous system? They could have started out as extra tissue, but their composition caused various effects (for instance, the brain conducted electricity throughout the body, essentially taking control, which helped it survive) and then the trait was passed on and gradually improved, with each improvement being able to survive while defects generally didn’t. As for DNA- who knows, but it’s really cool!
But none of that matters. God created the Earth and everything in it, the Bible says so (and the Torah, and possibly the Koran) and the Bible is the word of God. Well, technically it isn’t. The Bible was scribed by men, then translated by more men. Back in those days civilization was hardly civilized at all, people believed wholeheartedly in giants and dragons and witches, they could have been mistaken on any point God told them. God could not have made them write it right, because that would violate our all-important free will. Therefore the Bible is merely a rough outline at best.
Of course I’m not taking sides, so I’d like to tell you something interesting: for a brief period of time, I was Christian. I believed in God and heaven and I considered the Bible to be fact. I figured out in moments how it could be possible that God created Earth less than one million years ago. He must have placed all those fossils there. Just before writing this article I even came up with a reason: to give some people a sense of purpose. It has certainly done that. Even though we have radioactive dating machines, there is no saying for sure that God did not simply put the atoms in that state to give us more to do with the rocks we dug up. I can think of number of other ways it could be inaccurate as well.
So if both sides of the argument are just as plausible, perhaps a third explanation is actually true. And you can’t make a completely foolproof argument for either side. You just end up with hurt feelings and anger all around. So please don’t argue about it.
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5 Responses to “Creation vs. Evolution”
On August 24, 2009 at 5:02 am
An excellent article..very educational and highly informative article. Lesarned a lot today..Thanks..Keep it up friend.
On August 24, 2009 at 6:21 am
Dreyan: I was astonished by your article. Almost every proposition you made was demonstrably false. Nor did you produce a coherent account of either side’s position. I fail to see how you expect to ‘quell the flames’ with this kind of performance.
1) You claim that the religious side of the argument is ‘usually Christian’. You provide no basis for this. Of all the religious people in the world, a minority is Christian. Of all Christians, a tiny minority are Creationists. And there are creationists in all creeds.
2) You claim that the religious argument ‘centers on’ two concepts. Again, you provide no evidence. Some Crationist arguments ‘center on’ the Book of Genesis, which has nothing whatsoever to say about the impossibility of evolution.
3) Nobody claims that Down Syndrome is the cause of species having different numbers of chromosomes.
4) The morphology of breeds of dog – which you admit are the same species – are entirely irrelevant to a theory of speciation.
5) Your paragraph of complex organs is meaningless; it’s placed within your account of ‘the religious view’ but , in so far as it says anything at all, appears to be a counterargument from the ’scientific view’. The brain does not, in fact, conduct electricity throughout the body.
6) The claim that the Bible contains the word of God is of course not invalidated by the fact that it was written down or translated by humans. The civilisations of back then, which you are so ready to slur as hardly civilised, produced a number of people capable of expressing themselves rather more clearly and coherently than you appear to be able to. Your assertion that the Bible is ‘a rough outline’ because of free will (!) is nonsensical.
7) When we say ‘I figured out in moments’ we are usually claiming some originality in our thoughts. The idea that God set up the Universe in a state that makes it appear more ancient than it is, is an old one, and no modern Creationist theory depends on it.
9) There are people who rationally believe in God the Creator and accept that the theory of evolution is a plausible account of speciation.
There are people who rationally have decided that evolution + modern physics provides enough of an account of our existence that God is rendered unnecessary by Occam’s razor.
And there are people who have faith in God and a more or less literal belief in the Bible and who draw the conclusion that evolutionary theorists and other scientists have gone wrong somewhere.
There is nothing wrong with debating these approaches – your wish to ’stop the arguing’ is bizarre. Why should those who seek the truth not test their positions in the forum of ideas?
Your contribution, no doubt well meant, is unlikely to stop any arguments, nor does it shed any light on them.
On August 24, 2009 at 6:26 am
Dreyan: I was astonished by your article. Almost every proposition you made was demonstrably false. Nor did you produce a coherent account of either sides position. I fail to see how you expect to *quell the flames* with this kind of performance.
1) You claim that the religious side of the argument is *usually Christian*. You provide no basis for this. Of all the religious people in the world, a minority is Christian. Of all Christians, a tiny minority are Creationists. And there are creationists in all creeds.
2) You claim that the religious argument *centers on* two concepts. Again, you provide no evidence. Most Creationist arguments *center on* the Book of Genesis, which has nothing whatsoever to say about the impossibility of evolution.
3) Nobody claims that Down Syndrome is the cause of species having different numbers of chromosomes.
4) The morphology of breeds of dog – which you admit are the same species – are entirely irrelevant to a theory of speciation.
5) Your paragraph of complex organs is meaningless; it is placed within your account of *the religious view* but , in so far as it says anything at all, appears to be a counterargument from the *scientific view*. The brain does not, in fact, conduct electricity throughout the body.
6) The claim that the Bible contains the word of God is of course not invalidated by the fact that it was written down or translated by humans. The civilisations of back then, which you are so ready to slur as hardly civilised, produced a number of people capable of expressing themselves rather more clearly and coherently than you appear to be able to. Your assertion that the Bible is *a rough outline* because of free will (!) is nonsensical.
7) When we say *I figured out in moments* we are usually claiming some originality in our thoughts. The idea that God set up the Universe in a state that makes it appear more ancient than it is, is an old one, and no modern Creationist theory depends on it.
9) There are people who rationally believe in God the Creator and accept that the theory of evolution is a plausible account of speciation.
There are people who rationally have decided that evolution modern physics provides enough of an account of our existence that God is rendered unnecessary by Occam\’s razor.
And there are people who have faith in God and a more or less literal belief in the Bible and who draw the conclusion that evolutionary theorists and other scientists have gone wrong somewhere.
There is nothing wrong with debating these approaches – your wish to \’stop the arguing\’ is bizarre. Why should those who seek the truth not test their positions in the forum of ideas?
Your contribution, no doubt well meant, is unlikely to stop any arguments, nor does it shed any light on them. Oh dear.
On August 26, 2009 at 11:59 am
Excellent point re fossils. I have always believed the Bible to represent symbology at its best and needs to interpreted and at the same time requires to be read spiritually between the lines. And while we are speaking of the Bible here, there is some contradictory scriptures within the Bible that can cause some confusion within the overall content of this magnificently written scripture.
Amen.
On September 9, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Science and religion have to progress in harmonmy…
“If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if He does exist, one will lose everything by not believing. In every man’s heart there is an emptiness that only God can fill with his son Jesus Christ. In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”
jon
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