Creationism vs. Evolutionism?

Question

what do you beleive in and what is your rational supporting it?

Answer 1

evolution, for that is where the evidence leads.

Answer 2

So which theory of creationism do you support? Remember they are only theories. (May as well return the dig that "evolution is "only" a theory.")

Here's the problem The issue isn't an "either or" one. It's not a political campaign where negative attack ads will cause voters to switch sides. Every culture, tribe and people  have creation narratives. If people believe in creationism, which theory is the "right" one?

Here are the theories

"Young Earth" Created by supernatural means 6-10,000 years ago

"Old Earth" Earth is millions, not thousands of years old. This theory has several versions:

    "Gap" Earth is old but had fallen into decay. Life was begun on the old planet. This does address fossil evidence.

    "Progressive" God allows certain things natural selection and mutations to occur but will directly intervene as required.

    "Framework Interpretation" holds the Genesis account isn't literal but more represents the outline of how life came to be.

    "Day Age" Here it's held that "Day" can be thousands of millions of years. The world was crated in 6 "days" but it was over a very long time.

"Theistic" AKA  "evolutionary creationism", creation is compatible with  scientific theory (evolution) as it is a tool used by God,

" Literal" God created everything in 6 days right before 23 October  4004 BC. Everything in Genesis is correct and true.

So which theory of creationism are you talking about?

Answer 3

both...i believe the human form has evolved to what it is today as well as the rest of the world, however there must be greater being to create the this phenomenon, the universe. i believe in the big bang theory, i just imagine it was at the snap of His fingers

Answer 4

I don't think the ideas are mutually exclusive, but I think there is a lack of evidence for both. However, creationism does not generally purport to have a whole lot of verifiable evidence, whereas macroevolution claims to have a lot more proven evidence than it actually has. Both are taken on faith.

Answer 5

for sure evolution ..and i don't know how come people believing in creationism keep criticizing evolution as if

it's not supported with evidences while creationism has no

credible scientific evidence or so whatever

evolution is not a way to deny the existence of God

i do believe in God ..and i can't see how both contradict each

other ..and if you want evidences for evolution..

-fossil records

-genetic similarity between creatures

-geographical distribution of creatures

-the evolution of anti-biotic resistant bacteria

-the evolution of pesticides resistant insects and plants...

check out this link to get the information you want about

evolution and common descent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of...

Answer 6

So what you're saying is that the Bible is an interpretation of nature, not literal truth.  I can accept that.

Assuming, however, that a "day" --.meaning the time it takes the sun to cross from one horizon to the other, was essentially the same length of time as a day is today, it is hard to rationalize that the universe was created first (presumably before there was an earth to have a "day" or  "night") and everything in it was created in  that space of six "days".  

So obviously,the term  "day" is also not literal, as you observed.

So, then, the logical conclusion is that the Bible was never iintended, and should not be interpreted, as "literally" true, but only symbolically  true -- which leaves the field of rational explanation for natural events solely to science to provide those answers.

Answer 7

There is no " creationism vs evolution. " Evolution, the change in allele frequency over time in a population of organisms," is fact. The theory of evolution by natural selection, explains this fact with more evidence that you could possible comprehend ( seeing you asked this question )

Creationism is bunk with out a shred of empirical support. Only the truly ignorant even would consider such a lie worth two minutes of any ones time.

Answer 8

At this time, I believe that the human race needs to be more concerned on where it is going, not how it got here.  We are "creating our own evolution" and we are going downhell, fast. Revolute quickly...b4 its too late

Answer 9

It is close to 150 years since Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species", and during that entire time it has been tested by naturalists, biologist, geologists, paleontologists, physicists, etc. and not only have they been unable to falsify natural selection (which was Darwin's great insight), but their research has lead to the strengthening of evolution to the point that it is one of the main underpinnings of science.

There is a great deal of evidence for pathogens evolving resistance under selective pressure of antibiotics--the so-called superbugs.

Also, there is a lot of evidence that insects have evolved resistance to pesticides such as DDT.

Peppered moths are a great example of natural selection as well as how science works. The original research was widely excepted, but other evolutionary scientists found problems with the way that research was done. The research was redone, addressing the problems in methods, and reconfirmed the conclusions. (see first two links below).

Additional evidence for evolution can be found in looking at populations that are in the process of speciation. Since evolution does not proceed quickly enough to show that entire process in a human lifetime or even in several human lifetimes, you have to look at several examples:

1. Ligers and tigons: these are offspring of lions and tigers. Ligers are offspring of lionesses and male tigers, tigons the offspring of tigresses and male lions. Lions are known to have overlapped in range with tigers in the near past--the last 10,000 years or so (see third link below). Even now there are reports of rare crosses in the wild but normally crosses are in captivity and often by means of artificial insemination (the 3rd-5th links below). Only the female crosses are fertile.

2. Mules: Offspring of horses and asses (donkeys) are mules, well know for being sterile.

3. Herring Gulls: In England, The Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull coexist but do not interbreed--the sign of different species. However, if one follows the Herring Gull populations westward, around the Arctic Circle, one finds that the populations change in appearance, becoming more like Lesser Black-backed Gulls. By the time you reach England again, there are two species, even though up to that point, each population of gull can and does interbreed with it's neighbors. There are other examples, such as the salamander Ensatina in the US pacific coast (see the 6th and 7th links below).

Another major source of evidence is of course the fossil record. There are so many examples, that it is hard to single out just a few examples, but I'll try.

1. The evolution of life before 600 million years ago: It is well known that there was an (apparently ) enormous and sudden flowering of life in the Cambrian period, with little or no evidence of life in earlier rock. This for years has been used by creationists to attack evolution, but a great deal of research has been done in the last fifty years, and there is a good record now of life on earth going back to about 3.6 billion years ago. An excellent book on this topic is Andrew H. Knoll's "Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth" (see the 8th link below).

2. Evolution of Tetrapods and Cetaceans: A great deal of research, spanning paleontology, molecular genetics, ontology and other fields in Biology has been done on the evolution of land vertebrates (tetrapods), and a clear picture has emerged.

This has included many testable predictions (one of the elements of science--theories [that is, well-tested explanations] will generate testable hypotheses), such as predicting that one should find fossils of vertebrates in the process of adapting to life on land in rocks around 375 million years old-- a prediction that did happen.

No more interesting than the process by which vertebrates evolved to live on land, is the process by which the cetaceans evolved to live a fully aquatic life. Again, research in the last thirty years has clarified how this happened.

A good account for both of these is Carl Zimmer's "At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea" (see the 9th link below).

3. Human Evolution: This is of course the elephant in the corner. If evolution did not imply that humans evolved, there would be no fight at all. Without going into a HUGE amount of detail, I'll note that two of the most famous paleoanthropological finds were made by workers who predicted where fossil hominid remains were and then went out and found them: Eugen (or Eugene) DuBois and Pithecanthropus (now known as Homo erectus) in Java, and Louis Leakey and his hominid finds in East Africa (see the 10th-13th links below).

Before moving on to Creation, I want to emphasize several points.

First, the word "theory" has a different meaning in science then it does popularly. In science, a theory is an explanation or set of explanations for which there is a considerable body of supporting work, usually over a considerable period of time. Darwinian evolution, or, more exactly, the NeoDarwinian synthesis, now has 150 years of testing behind it. The popular meaning of "theory" is a yet untested or unsupported idea. This is closer to what science call a hypothesis, if it isn't a wild guess or assertion of opinion. A lot of confusion can be avoided if this difference is kept in mind.

Second, the NeoDarwinian synthesis is not something to just toss aside. It is the basic organizing theory in biology. There is very little in biology now that does not depend on or bear on evolution. Further, much evidence supporting evolution is basis in other scientific disciplines, such as physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry and so forth. Further, there are other field, such as medicine which depend on the insights gained from evolution.

Third, if you examine the links below, you'll find lots of disagreements among evolutionary scientists. This is not a weakness, but strength. This is how science works. Ideas are presented, supported, tested, pulled apart, argued over until the idea is rejected, or tentatively accepted.

Regarding Creation, I cannot build any case for its acceptance. We tend to equate "creation" with a more or less literal interpretation of the book of Genesis in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Science can only work with material causes and material phenomena. Why is this? Because science takes an explanation and tests it, trying to disprove it (you can't prove something is true, you can only disprove it).

How can you test creation? Every piece of evidence mentioned above can be met by the statement: "God in His wisdom has ordained it to be so".

There is really nothing to be said further, there is no point where they come to grips.

Why then the "controversy"? It is because some people of belief feel that the concept of evolution is so contrary to belief that it should not be taught, or if it does that creation should be taught too.

In the US, there is now almost forty years of case law that concludes that Creation is a specific form of religious belief and cannot be taught in public schools as science (see the 14th and 15th links below).

Creation supporters want creation in some form taught to oppose evolution. They have tried to repackage creationism as "Creation Science" or "Scientific Creationism", they have tied to get equal time for it in the classroom, and the courts have in each case declared it to be religion, not science.

Most recently, creationism has been repackaged as "Intelligent Design", with the more modest goal of "teaching the controversy", by which they mean the "scientific" controversy.

Intelligent design got its day in court in the case Kitzmiller vs. Dover, where all parties wanted the judge to rule on whether ID was or was not science. Judge Jones clearly ruled that ID was not science, only creationism--i.e. religion renamed. (see link 15 below  and link 16 for Judge Jones' decision).

One of the most damning exhibits presented was proof that the ID textbook "Of Pandas and People" was really a Creation Science textbook, with ID language replacing Creationist language. In fact a poor job was done, so that the term "creationists" was replaced with "cdesign proponentsists" instead of the intended "intelligent design proponents" (see links 17-21 below).

So if creationism is religion, not science, where do they draw a scientific case? The blunt fact is that they don't. Their "case" is based on misrepresenting the work of evolutionists by selective misquoting. They want to get some form of creation into the schools (currently this form is Intelligent Design) to effect a societal change, not to teach science. (This is not really denied by the creationists, they quite openly have their strategy, called the "Wedge Strategy" on the web, see link 22. For more on creationist tactics and their refutation, see "Panda's Thumb", link 23 below).

To conclude, evolution is a well-supported scientific theory with almost 150 years of scientific study backing it up.

To the extent the "controversy" need be taught, it should be taught in Social Studies where it belongs.

wl

Answer 10

Evolution is a fraud. You should see ENORMOUS numbers of clearly definable, consecutive transitional forms in the fossil record. YOU DONT. Some darwinists say, oh yeah, there are a few. No, Sorry. The theory requires more than just "a few" speculative fossils. Exellent reads: "Billions of missing links", By Geoffrey Simmons, MD, and "Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals who find darwinism unconvincing",ed., Wm. Dembski.

Answer 11

I think God created all living things kind of as a starting point, and they have evolved from then.

No rational explination, really.

Answer 12

I believe that the U.S. has a pitiful educational system, specifically with regards to science.  My rational being that there are actually people in this country, right now, who are putting a religious belief with no supporting evidence on equal grounds as a theory which has yielded usable predictions time and time again.  It's like comparing palm reading and economics, or faith healing and medicine.