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).