Creationism vs. Evolution: Either dust or lightening startedit all
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Alyssa Beck
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Senior Seminar
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December 2, 2002
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Thesis: Evolutionand Creationism are controversial issues that scientists and theologians aretrying to find a common ground to explain how it all started.
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A. Introduction
B. The Beginning
C. Age of the Earth
D. Other topics
E. Human Evolution
F. Conclusion
G. References
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Creationism andthe study of evolution has been a controversial debate for decades now, leavingmany people on one side or the other.Creationism argues that faith should take precedent over science, basingits beliefs on one book for guidance, the Bible. God created the earth and everything on it, taking six days. Evolutionists believe that the earth is mucholder than the Bible describes, and that plants, animals, and humans are aresult of a natural progression called evolution. There were no common ancestors (Adam and Eve) from whom we came;it was a natural selection process, stemming from inorganic compounds andnature. For many people in thescientific world, it is hard to take a final stance on this issue since thereis evidence of evolution, but that is where faith in God and what God has donecomes into effect. According to a greatmedieval philosopher, Moses Maimonides, “conflicts between science and theBible arise from either a lack of scientific knowledge or a defectiveunderstanding of the Bible”(Schroeder, 3).This paper will reveal some topics that these two groups debate about,along with their viewpoints.
The beginning ofthe earth, along with the birth of humans is one of the biggest and mostcontentious issues among creationists and evolutionists. Scientific theory holds the opinion that theuniverse is eternal, while the Bible states that there is a beginning. It has been proven that there was anofficial beginning; the question that arises is when that exact beginning tookplace, a time where there was neither time nor space nor matter. Christianity uses the Old Testament todescribe the beginning of life. In thespan of six days, God created the heavens, the earth, the sun, moon, water,animals, and ended with the finalé of human beings. Other major events such as Noah’s flood occurred along thelifespan of the earth, accounting for the distribution of fossils and theformation of the earth’s layers. St.Augustine of Hippo (who was raised a Christian and later became a member of theManicheans) believed that the Old Testament was nonsense. He “believed therefore that organic formswere potentially in a kind of seed-form, and realized actually when theconditions were right- when the seas appeared for instance”(Ruse, 51). Augustine believed that God createdeverything in one move: conception, wish, and creation were all at the sametime. This thinking was also a beliefheld by Galileo later on in history.
Evolution isdefined as “the development by natural causes of all organisms, those today andthose yesterday, from other forms probably ultimately much simpler andoriginally perhaps from non-living substances”(Ruse, 12). According to evolutionists, the earth beganapproximately 4.5 billion years ago, with the explosion of life beginningaround 55 million years ago. Toevolutionists, the starting of life began as inorganic molecules that underwenta natural transformation (through electricity or heat) to become organicmolecules. These building blocks joinedto form macromolecule chains that eventually made up organisms. The chains started to replicate and “feedoff the ‘pre-embryonic soup’, which is the state of ponds and so forth as theresult of the first stage of evolution”(Ruse, 62). Experiments done by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in Chicago(1950’s) confirmed this by subjecting inorganic molecules to heat and electricshock. They were able to obtain organicamino acid compounds naturally and rapidly.Evolution finds the origins of organisms developing along a 4.5 billionyear span, and says that humans are a “new creation”. It does deny though that humans are the final creation, whichcontradicts the creationism theory where God created human beings in the lastday, then resting after Creation was complete.Fossil identification and geography gave evolutionists some insight asto when earth and life began. Otherways used besides fossil identification to guide evolution include: comparinganatomical features, embryological analogies, andsimilarities/dissimilarities.
Charles Darwin wasa strong believer in evolution and was the founder of the theory of naturalselection. Natural selection is thetheory that there is competition – for survival, mates, space, food, shelter,etc.- in which the favorable organisms tend to be preserved by nature and theunfavorable ones tend to die out, leading to evolution. There are two major types of evolution,macroevolution and microevolution.Macroevolution deals with changes above the species level, whilemicroevolution is changes in gene frequencies within a population, which maylead to the formation of new species.Darwin believed natural selection occurred in nature, the need to selectand breed only the best and most desirable stock. The concepts of genetics and hereditary did not come along untillater when introduced by Gregor Mendel, and later the study of evolutionemerged with the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953.
The age of theearth has been debatable, first with creationists stating that the earthstarted with God first creating the heavens and the earth. Some scientists argue that the earth alreadyhad the properties to sustain life, as the Bible agrees. “And God said, Let the land producevegetation”(Genesis 1:11), and later on, “Let the land produce livingcreatures according to their kind”(1:24).Nowhere in the Bible does it say or suggest that each species had itsown creation. A view that is stronglyupheld by creationists is that all living things have remained fixed over time,God created each creature the exact way that we see the organisms today. When God created the earth and everything onit, God said it was good. Creationistsargue that if something arose that was not perfect in God’s eyes; God had thepower to destroy it, hence the reasoning for the flood. God kept the good and destroyed the bad.
It isscientifically difficult to take the Bible seriously because manyinterpretations have been made over the decades and most people believe thatone cannot take everything within the Bible literally. For example in Genesis 1:5,8,13, itdescribes how God created evening and day, and every verse following a day ofcreation ends with “and there was evening and the there was morning”. But it is not until later on in Genesis thata sun and moon were created to govern the day and evening. “God made two great lights- the greaterlight to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night”(1:16). This example, along with countless otherspoints to scientific belief that the Bible is an unreliable source, one thatspecific scientific information should not be taken from. The Bible does suggest one evolutionarychange in a physical trait, the trait of longevity. Throughout the Bible, the life spans (at the beginning werearound 900 years) and sexual maturity (ranged from 65-187) decreased, for itwas a miracle for Sarah and Abraham to have a son, and she was only 89 yearsold. “The trend of shortening life spanand more rapid sexual maturity is similar to that observed in domesticatedanimals”(Schroeder, 15). This forms abasis for today’s breeding and population genetics. Evolutionists state that creationists have only one source fromwhich they are arguing from, and their arguments are a way of covering up whatthey do not know or understand about the scientific world. This failure has come in two main ways: “1)the failure to deal with the large amount of evidence that supports evolutionand the fact that animals and plants are different today than in the past, and2) the failure to provide any alternative theory to natural history”(Miller,55). The real theory of creationism isbased and centered on faith, faith in God and what God has provided. “Science exists because of evidence, whereasreligion exists upon faith, and, in the case of fundamentalism and creationism,in spite of evidence”(Berra, 130).
The evolutioniststake a different stand on this topic of life.“No mention of a special creation is associated with the start oflife. The earth itself had the specialproperties to orchestrate the beginning of life”(29). Today this would be referred to as self-organization with the aidof catalysts. The experiments done byMiller and Urey support the statement that the earth was awaiting for itsbeginning on its own time. Organicmolecules, proteins, plant life, and animal life evolved along with way. Fossil evidence was discovered that showedlife started immediately on a cooled earth.Fossils show a variety of species and show species evolving into otherspecies (intermediate or transitional species). “The fact of the matter is that the fossil record not onlydocuments evolution, but that it was the fossil record itself which forcednatural scientists to abandon their idea of the fixity of species and looksinstead for a plausible mechanism of change, a mechanism of evolution”(Miller,48). For example in the western UnitedStates, scientists were able to trace the modern single-hoofed horse to adog-sized creature, Eohippus, which ran around on its five toes. Also, according to animal and humandevelopment, all organisms start out life in the same form, eventuallyspecializing into their specific species.For example, the human develops similar to a reptile with a fewmodifications that make the human species unique: yolk sac to fish eggs to havinga tail to a 3- chambered heart (like areptile) to a 4 -chambered heart to reptilian double jaw joint to skin folds(gill slits) to covering of hair to having human characteristics.
One argumentagainst fossil evidence is the idea that fossil dating could beinaccurate. Fossil dating is done usingCarbon 14, but for it to be of value, the amount of C-14 must have always beena constant. If the intensity ofradiation (specifically cosmic radiation) differed in any way, then the C-14dating system would be flawed.Scientists discovered fossils throughout the various layers of the earthaccording to the time period the organisms corresponded with. The bottom layers contained speciesassociated with the beginning of the earth, while the top layers contain morerecent and advanced species, especially mammals. Evolutionists feel that these findings strongly argue forevolution. They feel that if God hadcreated the earth and everything on it, all fossil remains would be mixedtogether. Creationists argue that thereason for the fossils being distributed the way they are is because of the GreatFlood. Most of the time creationistsavoid this topic because of the lack of evidence they have against it. The controversy continues whether gradualevolution took place, and if it did occur, why was it not evident in fossilrecords. “The ferocity of the battlesuggests that sudden leaps in the record would imply God’s direct role inevolution while gradualism would mean randomness and no role forGod”(Schroeder, 32).
Another theorythat some scientists are using to explain the beginning of the earth is the BigBang Theory. This theory states thatthe “universe began as an infinitely hot point of infinite density, whichcooled and diffused as it exploded outward”(Berra, 71). Space, time, matter, and energy existed onlyafter the Big Bang. The reasoning forthis theory is based on our knowledge of how the universe is based on theanalysis of electromagnetic radiation, providing data that shows the universeis expanding. Two astronomers ArnoPenzias and Robert Wilson detected cosmic microwave background radiation in theground, which is later the primeval light and heat from the Big Bang. This heat and light provide the formula forthe start of life. This theory has beencontroversial among the scientific community as well as the religiouscommunity, but it was substantial enough to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in1978.
Another puzzlingquestion that is brought up among evolutionists when debating with creationistsis, what about the dinosaurs? There isno place in the bible that talks about the dinosaur age, when these hugereptilian creatures roamed the earth without human interference and thensuddenly disappeared. Paleontologistsand archeologists estimate the dinosaurs to have lived around 65 million yearsago, during the Cretaceous period.There are a number of speculations for their extinction: the climate became too extreme one way orthe other, the animals fed on newly evolved poisonous plants, new speciesevolved and ate the eggs of the dinosaurs, or an asteroid or comet fell to theearth, destroying everything on the earth.“Recent speculation based on marine-animal families over the last 250million years argues that large scale extinctions occur about every 26 millionyears”(Berra, 17). These large scaleextinctions are due a companion star coming close to the sun, disrupting theorbits and causing comets and asteroids to hit the earth. According toscientists, this mass extinction is approaching, but in the creationists eyes’this is the Apocalypse.
Yet, another approachto the creation of the earth relates to how we view time. In the Bible, each day is assigned a newcreation, but is time today the same as it was at the time of Creation? Some scientists believe that each day ofCreation is related to a geological time period. As one period began and developed, God added on to it, thusanother day of creation. Each day ortime period brings something new and different to the earth. The days of creation could be seen to humansas a 24-hour day; it is easier for us to comprehend a day in a 24-hour periodrather than in millions or billions of years.The Bible in a sense took the easier way out to describe the story ofcreation to us. “Deep within the Psalms90, there is truth of a physical reality: the six days of Genesis actually didcontain the billions of years of the cosmos even while the days remainedtwenty-four hour days”(Schroeder, 43).The Bible relates in the first thirty-one verses of Genesis the eventsthat span around 16 billion years, from mere hundred words theologically tomore than a million words scientifically.It is hard to evaluate the time it took for each day of creation sincewe are unable to have been there or have a first hand source; thus the reasoningfor scientists to look more at fossils and the earth’s strata for concreteevidence.
How human beingscame to be on the earth is another big topic among evolutionists andcreationists. Creationists livefaithfully by the belief that God made Adam from dust, in God’s image, “theLord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into hisnostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living person”(Genesis2:7). Eve was later made from theribcage of Adam as a companion. Adamand Eve are the beginning of the human species race, and from them, all humanbeings descend. Human beings were madein God’s image, giving us a choice to become spiritual and moral beings. This is what separates us from any otherspecies, for human beings have a soul, guided by God. The creation of Adam could be seen differently though dependingon how one interprets the Bible. Themaking of Adam relates to the body. Inthe Hebrew language, the word adam is rooted in the word meaningsoil. The creation of Adam refers tothe human soul, the neshama. Legendsand biblical scholars would say that Adam was created at the age of twenty, butit could be possible for him to be made at an earlier age and lived fornineteen years without a soul. Hebecame a human being at the age of twenty when God created him withneshama. There are several verseswithin the Bible (Numbers 1:3, 14:29, Deuteronomy 1:39) that teach at the ageof twenty one becomes divinely responsible for their own actions. Before the soul was given, there was somethinglike a man, but not completely human.So one view could be that Adam was created at the age of twenty, andbefore his creation, he had evolved from the primate species. When God finally saw a creature that Godwanted to represent God’s image, a soul was given, and Adam was created.
Evolutionists havea different view of how human beings came into the world, believing that wehave evolved from other species, specifically the primates. Fossil records have shown that hom*osapiens have evolved from four-legged creatures swinging through trees, to2-legged creatures that walk the earth.Fossils of pre-historic humans show a remarkable resemblance to theprimates, all the way from the jaw and forehead, to the torso and feet. Throughout time, evolution has adapted thehuman species into modern day human beings, making it possible to live inpresent-day times. Although it is hardto believe, we have now “established that it was only five to six million yearsago that we split off from the ancestral lines leading to the gorillas andchimpanzees, our closest relatives…”(Ruse, 69). Language developed because of adaptation as the need presenteditself. Just as we have changed technologyto make things easier for us, evolution has adapted us also, making it possiblefor us to live in today’s society. Itis doubtful that we could have lived in the same time that Neanderthals lived,as they would be unable to live in today’s world.
Creationism andevolution have two very different viewpoints of how the earth and human beingsbegan. Creationism is based on thebelief that the Bible is a credible source, which gives the story ofCreation. In the span of six days (24hour days), God created the heavens and the earth, the sun, moon, stars, andall of the creatures of the earth. Onthe very last day, God created Adam, a human being in God’s image to rule overthe earth. Creationists believe thatthe earth is young, and that organisms are fixed, every organism that we seetoday is the same organism that God created a few thousands of years ago. Adam and Eve are the beginning of the humanrace, and we are separated from every other species by the soul that God gaveus. Creationists say that those whobelieve in evolution are immoral. “Mostfrequent is the charge that evolutionists are ‘pompous and arrogant, just thekind of people that the First Amendment was written to protect us against’, andthat they display ‘an academic arrogance frequently typical of the nation’sscientific educational establishment’”(Toumey, 95).
Evolutionistsbelieve that human beings are a result of evolution, beginning with simplemolecules to today’s modern person. Theearth was made over a long period, beginning 4.5 billion years ago. Life began with inorganic molecules, andwith the help of nature, became viable living organisms. Each time period of the earth had its owncharacteristics with different organisms and life forms making that periodunique, and leaving behind traces with fossils. Animals and plant life evolve, becoming more fit for theenvironment. Human beings have alsoevolved along the way from our primate ancestors into today’s modern humans,but we are not the final product. Wetoo, will change over time, becoming a different species in future generations. Along with evolution, there are theoriessuch as the Big Bang theory, and critiques of how the Bible views time comparedto geological time. Evolutionistsbelieve that God was not the founder of the earth, instead it was a naturalphenomenon, beginning with inorganic molecules evolving into today’s modernperson.
I agree with botharguments to a certain degree. As ascientist, it is hard to discard tangible evidence that shows life has evolvedacross species. Yet, as a Christian, mylife is centered on faith in God. Ibelieve that God created life, but I believe God did it in a way that usesevolution. I believe that God createdeverything in six days, but that each day lasted millions of years, withdifferent species and life forms evolving throughout that era. I believe that God structured the world sothat there could be evolution. I thinkthat species have to adapt to changing environments, and God made each speciesof organisms so that it could survive each change that takes place. I do not necessarily believe that humanbeings are the finalé; I think that we will change over the decades evolvinginto higher specie. I do not believe inthe Big Bang Theory or that life stemmed from inorganic molecules. God started life, and then gave nature freedomto develop. If God did not like theoutcome, it was destroyed by means of a natural disaster, such as the asteroidending the life of the dinosaurs or by the Noah’s flood. If it was good, then things stayed, and lifecontinued. This is a hard topic to takea definite stand on since faith is abstract, yet a way of life for Christians,and science is concrete. There is aneed for cooperation between the two worlds though since there are Christiansin science, but it takes one to look at both sides to decide on what one’s owntheory is on the beginning of life and human evolution.
“Reconciliationdoes not require that every scientist becomes a believer, or that everybeliever embrace all aspects of science.It will be complete when we accept the need to read and understand theBible on the Bible’s terms…and when scientists, having already discovered thatthere is a limit to knowledge, admit that science is powerless to confirm ordeny a purpose for life”(Schroeder, 21).
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Berra, Tim M. Evolution and the Myth ofCreationism. Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA. 1990.
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Collegiate and Devotional Bible (NIV). Zondervan Publishing House: Grand Rapids,MI. 1998.
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Kitcher, Philip. Abusing Science: The Case AgainstCreationism. MIT Press: Cambridge,MA. 1982.
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Miller, Kenneth R. Finding Darwin’s God: AScientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. Cliff Street Books: New York. 1999.
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Montagu, Ashley(Ed). Science and Creationism. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 1984.
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Pitman,Michael. Adam and Evolution. Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, MI. 1984.
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Ruse,Michael. Can a Darwinian be aChristian? Cambridge UniversityPress: Cambridge, UK. 2001.
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Schroeder, GeraldL. The Science of God. The Free Press: New York. 1997.
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Toumey, Christopher P. God’s Own Scientists: Creationists in aSecular World. Rutgers UniversityPress: New Brunswick, NJ. 1994.
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Zetterburg, J. Peter. Evolutionversus Creationism: The Public Controversy. Oryx Press: Phoenix, AZ.1983.
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