“Mommy, where do babies come from?” was a question that I would constantly bug my parents about when I was little.  I would usually get different variations of stories from both my mom and dad, which confused me even more.  My dad would say that I was dropped down a chimney by a stork, while my mom would explain that I was the result of love.  The stories are interesting and all, but the most important question still remained unanswered.  Instead, it created more questions, like how did I end up in the stork’s beak or what is love?  As adults, the question of “where did we come from” still mystifies us; certainly, we know how we were born, and how we grew out of childhood, but what we really hunger for is an understanding of how we, as human beings, actually came to be on this lonely planet.  Ask a large number of people, “Where did we come from?” and you will get an assortment of answers.  Once we sort through these answers, we see that they basically fall into two sides.  Some believe that humans are the products of natural selection – to them life began as slime in a pond and became more complex through sheer chance or in scientific terms, evolution.  Others believe that we were deliberately created by an all-powerful creator and put on this earth with a purpose of leading a righteous life.  These two opinions often result in a debate between creationism and evolutionism.  My research for this paper comes from the numerous discussion boards and various articles about these two theories that exist all over the internet.

Our ancestors were just as curious as we are now, so they also questioned how they came to be and they solved this mystery with ease by crediting Gods with creation and Demons with destruction.  One thing that all historians seem to agree on is that the origin of Creationism predates any religion; in fact it originated at the time when our ancestors were still living in caves.  The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero was the first to delve deeper into the theory of Creationism in his writings, De Natura Deorum, which anticipated the “Watchmaker Argument”.  This argument states that a watch is a complex instrument that needs the intelligent design of a skilled watchmaker.  The same can be said about the workings of the universe, in order for the universe to work properly, an equally intricate being is needed to make it work.  God is the watchmaker here and the universe is his watch, but the question is, does he really exist.  Creationists have no proof of his existence, except for religious scriptures and faithful believers, to prove his existence.  The most influential brand of creationism today is Young Earth Creationists; they claim a literal interpretation of the Bible as a basis for their beliefs.  They believe that the earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old, that all life was created in six literal days, that death and decay came as a result of Adam & Eve disobeying God and that the geology of the Earth is the direct result of Noah’s Flood.  However, they do accept a spherical earth and the existence of a solar system.  Creationism as a theory is based on religious faith and scriptures rather than evidence acquired through experiment and observation; it cannot be evaluated by science, because science cannot explain issues of supernatural intervention in natural phenomena.  If the theory of creationism doesn’t sound acceptable to you, there’s always evolutionism, which might shine more light on the issue in question.

Everything in the universe is governed by the laws of science; therefore, it is possible to answer any question through the use of science.  The theory of evolution can be traced back to the time of Aristotle.  Roman atomists Epicurist and Titus Lucretius Carus co-wrote the poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) describing the development of the living earth in stages from atoms colliding in the void as swirls of dust, afterwards plants and animals sprang from the newly created earth’s substance, a succession of animals including a series of progressively less brutish humans followed.  The essence of De Rerum Natura was naturalism and the avoidance of explaining the workings of the universe with the supernatural.  There are also suggestions of an evolutionary approach in ancient Indian text, especially the Vedas, where the incarnations of Vishnu reflect the theory of evolution.  Ibn Miskawayh’s al-Fawz al-Asghar expressed evolutionary ideas on how species evolved from matter, into vapor, and then water, then minerals, then plants, then animals, then apes, and lastly humans.  In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, which articulated the first full-fledged theory of evolution by natural selection.  Darwin was the first to defy his religious teachings and ponder the mystery of our existence with the help of science, but he did it during a time when Christianity held more power than science, so he was ridiculed for his theory that humans share a common ancestor with apes.  Darwin’s work led to the rapid acceptance of evolution, but his proposed mechanism of natural selection was not widely accepted until the early 20th century.  Darwin’s theory of evolution has been widely accepted among the scientific community; serving to link the diverse specialty areas of biology; but scientist still question whether the theory of evolution should be fact or theory.

The evidence to support the theory of evolution is strong and scientifically possible as opposed to that of creationism, research in the field of paleontology, supports the idea that all living creatures are related.  Fossils provide evidence that specific biological features of organisms do change over long periods of time, usually a few million years, this long process of change have somehow lead to the diverse forms of life we see today.  A fossil itself reveals the organism’s structure and the relationship it has between present and extinct species, allowing paleontologists to construct a family tree for all of the life forms on earth.  At present, many fossils have been discovered and identified.  These fossils serve as a chronological record of evolution.  The fossil record also provides examples of transitional species that demonstrate ancestral links between past and present life forms.  One such transitional fossil is Archaeopteryx, an ancient creature that had the distinct characteristics of a reptile, yet also possessed the feathers of a bird; this could suggest that birds and reptiles evolved from a common ancestor.  Creationism is only backed-up by writings and faith of which holds little credibility.  At the moment, the only plausible answer to “where did we come from?” is simply through evolution.  For now evolutionism is the only logical explanation and until other explanations surface in the near future, I’m sticking to the theory of evolution.

I wish I could end this essay by telling you, with certainty, the true origins of our species, but I am afraid that is not going to be possible.  Because, on the one hand we have Creationist who believe that a superior being, otherwise known as God, created the Earth and everything in it and he did all this in six twenty-four hour days.  On the other hand, we have Evolutionists, like Hawkins and Darwin, who have been scorned by the Christian community for their belief in the long process of evolution.  Personally, I would agree with evolution, because it sounds more logical, but I can’t speak for everybody.  So until we can either scientifically prove the existence of God or evolution as a fact, the argument between evolutionism and creationism will wage on.