Evolution Or Creation? 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).