Creation Or Evolution Essay Research Paper EVOLUTION

Creation Or Evolution? Essay, Research Paper

EVOLUTION OR CREATION?

In a coherent world like ours people are questioning their religion and not knowing whether to believe in creation by God or evolution, Through out my research I have found four possible answers to this question to incorporate both theories . Which prove neither wrong and belief in both at the same time

One approach would be to believe that when God when created the trees in 4004 BCE, he would have formed them complete with growth rings. So too with other plants, animals and minerals. Everything in the world would then appear as if they had existed in the period of time prior to creation. In other words, God created the world as if it has had a past. One would interpret the evidence to show that the world was created only a few thousand years ago, but that it was created looking as if it had evolved over billions of years .

A second approach would involve a relatively small change in the belief system of the “Genesis believing” creation scientists. The change would be to accept the Genesis account of creation as God’s initial creation message which He revealed to the ancient Israelites who lived in a pre-scientific age. This would have been the only type of explanation that they could understand at the time. This would require one to abandon the literal interpretation of Genesis in favor of the belief that it is a historical myth. One could argue that Jesus used parables to make a point about human nature; the parables did not necessarily describe real people. Perhaps the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures adopted some existing parables about creation and the flood from nearby Pagan cultures in order to make a point about God’s creative power and rejection of evil behavior. Perhaps God gave humanity the intelligence to eventually develop the skills to find out the reality of evolution. Most Christians believe that God’s revelation has been gradually released to humans. There is ample evidence in the Bible for this. Evolution may be one more example.

A third approach would be to define the “days” in the first chapter of Genesis as hundreds or thousands of millions of years in duration. This would allow time for the various evolutionary processes to occur. However, this concept has some serious flaws. some plants which depend upon birds, ants, etc. for pollination could not survive the hundreds of millions of years between the creation of plants and the creation of birds and animals.

A final approach is to accept the established findings of science. This requires that the first few chapters in Genesis be seen as creation myths – similar to myths of many other religions worldwide. This approach obviously requires that one abandon Biblical belief

1. L. E. Elliott-Binns, English Thought, 1860-1900: The Theological Aspect, (London: 1956), p. 136.

2. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, pp. 220 ff. See also L. E. Elliott-Binns. English Thought; T. K. Cheyne, The Founders of Old Testament Criticism, (1893); H. B. Swete, Cambridge Biblical Essays, (Cambridge: 1909).