• Question: Do you believe in evolution or the the theory of Creation. if you believe in either do you think that the two theories could be incorperated together or do you think they contradict each other. if you think they can be put together or the contradict each other why?

    Asked by markholmes2011 to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 18 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by balletbecca, 321blastoff, itsteeyah, tobeinstein, 235689jack, olivia212, izzy2429.
    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 18 Jun 2012:

      I believe in evolution. Evolution is actually a fact: we know that things evolve (for example viruses evolve to become more resistant to certain medicines all the time), but how and why they evolve is still a theory (theory of evolution by natural selection).
      I don’t think that evolution is compatible with the story of Creation, because there is no evidence for Creationism whereas there is a huge amount of evidence for Evolution. They contradict each other because Creationism relies upon the idea that there is a omnipotent being (God) that created everything exactly the way it is, but things change and evolve all the time (including moths changing the colour of their wings, birds changing the size of their beaks) that you would have to believe that God created everything & then also created the ability for evolution for this to make sense! I think that sounds very unlikely, so because I’m a scientist I believe the theory that is backed up by the most amount of evidence.
      Thanks for the question markholmes2011 🙂

    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 18 Jun 2012:

      High Mark. I believe in what the evidence tells us and at the moment this is evolution. They could be compatible if you say that god created the original creatures that then evolved into what we have today, but for that to be true there would need to be some evidence for god to exist or that he did create us, which at the moment there isn’t. There are also a lot of things in nature that are not useful anymore like our appendix. Evolution explains why we have an appendix, because it would have been useful to us in the past in some way but we have evolved to not need it anymore. But there isn’t a reason why god would create us with things we didnt need, unless it has a function that we havent found yet.

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 18 Jun 2012:

      Hiya mark,
      I believe in evolution and don’t buy the story of creation as told in the bible. I don’t think you can incorperate the two therories together. There is good evidence for evolution, whereas you have to rely on faith to believe in creation – so there’s no contest in my mind.

    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Hi markholmes2011!

      Great question! I think the two theories could be incorporated, but a few things have to be clear before that can happen: The first is that biology, life, and the universe, are all really complicated and that there is a huge amount of detail in everything that we see around us today! Science is all about discovering that detail and figuring out why it’s there, and how it appeared. But it’s taken science a long time to work these things out! Darwin published his book on the Origin of Species in 1859 and the evidence for the Big Bang was discovered in 1964 – that’s over 1500 years AFTER the bible was written! Back when the bible was written, very little was actually known about the facts, and very little evidence had been discovered about how everything came about.
      But people still wanted to know! Remember, this is when everyone thought the Earth was flat, that people would fall off the edgeif they went too far in the sea and that the sun and stars rotate around the Earth on transparent crystal balls… So in the bible was included a chapter with an explanation that fitted well at the time – that first there was light, then planets, then plants, then animals, then humans. Because it makes a clear story, it was added that each was done in one day, and the job complete in seven days. But there’s not a lot of detail in that story, so there’s very little to go by, and it wasn’t meant to be taken literally! Science and evolution on the other hand can explain where all the different plants and animals came from, and how many millions of years it took them to evolve into the fine detail they are today!

      Whether you believe that there is a God or not is a different question altogether I think – evolution still is a fact either way!

      What do you think?

      🙂 Sarah

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