Evolution/Creation - What's your stance?

I never could understand how anyone would believe in
Young Earth Creationism. The estimated age of the Earth isn't actually in the bible, it was based on Ussher's interpretation of it. At that time there wasn't as modern of mathematics as there are now - that alone should have people thinking "Now wait, maybe he made a mathematical error. No person is perfect."

If a person can't trust current mathematical findings about the age of the planet and universe, why trust Ussher?

I voted for the most logical choice in my opinion, materialistic evolution. Simply because out of all of these options, the materialistic evolution option, from what I know is best supported through what I think is logical and convincing evidence that is described in an organized and diligent way. That's not to say that I have no doubt that this is the one and only right answer, I do have my doubts however all of the other beliefs do not offer me this type of scientific evidence. I don't like to speculate that there is a God when I have never seen one nor have found any evidence of the existance of a god so that rules out theistic evolution for me. As far as intelligent design- I agree that life is complex, evolution though is not a simple theory either, and any scientist who has studied it can confirm this.

This is going to be another topic that evokes strong feelings, so please remember to be respectful and play nice

There isn't a "don't know/don't care" option, so I can't vote. It makes no difference to me whether the earth was created by a happenstance explosion in the universe, or a divine hand forming the planet and all life. Could be either and frankly there is no way to prove it one way or the other. Even if it were proven that there was a Big Bang and life evolved from carbon molecules, how could one possibly prove or disprove that a divine hand wasn't in control of the whole thing?

But by the same token, can you prove that there is no god or divinity? I'm not going to question your beliefs, just the basis that you use for the argument. The problem with that is that there is a lot of proof of various pieces and parts of religious texts being historically accurate. Obviously there is no way to prove that there is a G/god(ess)/(e)s, and to those who believe there is no way to prove that there is none either.

For the record, no I'm not any offshoot of a Judeo-based religion (Jewish, Christian, Muslim). I'm pagan, but I have studied Christianity and the Bible more than most Christians have, since I attended a Christian college.

No, there isnt' any proof that there is no god or divinity. There is also no proof that aliens don't exist, same with vampires and warewolves....
I am not saying that there was no Jesus Christ, or Mohammad in history. I just don't believe that any of the things they did were miraculous or omnipotent or whatever other way religious texts describe them. For example, I do believe that there was a man named Jesus who lived approximately 2000 years ago and claimed to be the son of god. I am not willing to take his word for it though- not to say he was lying.

I had the same problem.

Haha, that's so what I think all the time too! There is no proof that there aren't any werewolves, witches/warlocks, vampires, leprechauns (I do believe in them lol- LONG stupid story), fairies, aliens, mermaids, gremlins, elves or anything else along those lines.

I have always personally felt that most religions are outdated, considering when they were created/written. Religions were originally created to help explain why things happened in the universe, like why there are stars, why the sun rises and sets along with the moon, why there is illness, disease, death, etc. Nowadays, science has proven why the sun does what it does, what most deaths are caused by, how illness is started, all that. I remember all this from my freshman year in high school- that's very special for me to remember something like this from then so it must've meant something for me )

(I think it's obvious I voted for materialistic evolution)

My husband has done some extensive research into the dates in the Bible calculating the ages of Adam, etc. and we estimate the earth to only be about 10,000 yrs old at the max.

God's timetable is NOT our timetable and when it talks about 6 days - the days may be hundreds or thousands of years. But everything was created by God at the time he created them. Man, animals, dinosaurs all existed together and until Satan came in to tempt Eve and thus sin was brought into the world, everything ate plants (all animals and all people).

After sin entered the world, then that is when the animals started to attack. The flood covered the earth to wipe out the major dinosaurs because they could not exist any more with man.

In some parts of the Old Testament, there IS mentioned the dinosaurs as being with man (tho the word "dinosaur" does not appear only because its a word that was created by man in the 1800's). There are cave drawings around the world that picture dinosaurs. If they did not exist with man, then how could the tribes draw them - they only drew pictures of things they saw!

Of course those that do not put any credit in the Bible as the truth, will "create" their own theories of how things came into existence.

Then how come REALLY REALLY old dinosaur bones have been found, and no human bones from that time? What about the many dinosaur bones that are millions of years old? The bible is a story, and not something to base research on. How would they have recorded these "facts" 10,000 years ago? I can tell someone a story, and they'll tell it to someone else, and it will have changed. How much would biblical stories have changed over 10,000 years without accurate recording devices?

I will choose to believe in evolution as that's where science and hard evidence lead me to believe. Unless I get factual evidence otherwise, I will continue to believe in evolution.

I think religion is very suitable for many people as a code to live their lives by, to be part of a community, to always have someone turn to, and for many other reasons. I just don't see the bible as factual.

There is quite a bit of history in the bible, mostly within the Old Testament, but the Bible is fallible because it was written by man. There is a similar problem with recorded history because history is often written from the point of view the person recording it.

I'm a firm believer in evolution and science. Religion requires faith, and that is something I don't have and probably never will, but I'm not one to sit here and knock a person's religious beliefs. We can just agree to disagree.

A good friend of Teddy Roosevelt was a catholic priest by the name of John Augustine Zahm, who also taught physics and chemistry at the University of Notre Dame. Zahm went against the grain and supported Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He wrote a book called "Evolution and Dogma" and argued that evolution should be an ally, rather an enemy of religion.

Humans have something that no other animal really has, amazing imaginations. They had to explain the world around them and the things they found in whichever way they could - so when someone dug up huge bones and found fossils of course they could imagine what these creatures may have looked like.
They've found a lot of dinosaur bones in various archaeological digs. For a long time these were mostly ignored or cast aside because archaeologists didn't understand the significance of say, finding dinosaur bones at the site of a Greek temple. Various ancient civilizations would find these bones and record them into their art as their monsters or even as bones of some race of giants.

Aside from that, you don't have to see something to draw/paint it. Look at modern fantasy art - would you say that all the little knickknack figurines of fairies and unicorns are made from the artist seeing a real being/creature?

I've got to agree with Sarah here. I always found it funny when I was made to go to bible camp - we'd play a telephone game & the story was always wrong by the time you were at the end. Ironic - as I felt that was the bible.

I can't imagine there is a higher power, or that we have anywhere to go after life on earth.

I found really interesting when you said that all animals were herbivores. I'm curious why you think that, is it in the bible or somewhere else?? I always make a big fuss about whether it's right to eat animals according to my own moral standards, I go back and forth between eating meat and not eating, sometimes I am so disgusted by meat and don't want to touch it and at other times I look at cats and all other carnivores who all catch their prey and eat it and I find it the most natural thing of all....So i'm just always interested about what religions and other philosophies say about eating meat that's why I'm asking. I know what buddhists say but I had never heard anything about eating meat in the christian religion, although in the eastern orthodox christian religion I was raised in, we always made sacrifices of lambs on the days of the saints...

As far as dinosaurs being drawn by people, there are many animals who resemble dinosaurs- lizards and other reptiles and of course birds who are the only dinosaurs remaining as I like to say jokingly

I actually find this view very plausible..If I was asked how life originated this would probably be the answer I'd give although that's not what this thread is about

To me, this is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of knowledge that the only 2 possible answers are theistic and materialistic evolution. I could write a long long post on this, but suffice it to say, I can introduce a bacteria, change the environment, and watch evolution happen, ending up with a completely different organism than I started with. I do not see how anyone can say evolution does not exist in the face of this - in the face of a changing environment, genetic alterations occur to allow survival. There is also clear proof that not all species were originally created by god, you have to look no further than the bengal cat for an example of this. Sure, direct human intervention in this case, but there are natural hybrids as well.

Pretty much sums up what I was going to say.

The above posts best sum up my own beliefs. Like Heidi/valanhb, I had years of religious studies (Roman Catholicism in high school, comparative religions at university). I'd label myself an agnostic nowadays, but I see no point in putting down others' beliefs.

Don't know, not sure.

I'm quite certain that evolution is happening all the time, and has always been...I just don't know what existed on earth to begin evolving from.

I'm subscribe to being an Agnostic, with a slight lean toward Deism on the "but, what if?" side.

I find that there's a problem with accepting the conclusions at either end (science-based or religion-based, as I refer to them): the problem with science-based explanations is that science is inherently uncertain, there's always further testing to do, and the science of today may be considered no more than a quaint misconception in a few hundred years (what was that theory of reading personality by skull bumps called, again?), while the problem with religion-based explanations is that we can't test them and even among religious people there are ongoing debates as to the actual intent of the text (e.g. "was Genesis 1 meant as factual or poetic?"), so taking it on faith requires a non-obvious value judgment.

I lean toward intelligent design or theistic evolution because there are so many variables in fundamental physics that could have made life impossible if they had been just a little different, to where the universe has been called something like "improbably hospitable to life," and it seems unlikely to me that that would be a coincidence, implying that some intention caused the universe to be so. I wouldn't make as cool a toy as a life-bearing universe and not play with it, so it seems reasonable to me that the source of that intention would, after shaping the universe, shape at least some of the life in it.

But I could be wrong.

(Disclosure of background: mom is Southern Baptist, dad is skeptical agnostic, I grew up in a holy war and was raised Baptist to the extent I was raised anything which meant about 5 years of regular churchgoing, now I consider myself sort of generic Christian, my dad was enough of an influence that I end most statements about religion in "But I could be wrong.")

It's pretty much impossible to prove a negative.

All I can say is that our planet we call Earth is in near perfect symbionic balance and it has existed for probably billions of years. If the moon were to disappear, so would all life on earth. Each species (with the possible exception of man) is balanced by many another species. Our bodies (and even plant life) is extremely complex.

There are 108 known elements in nature. Each of us can be broken down into elements that make up the periodic chart. But that doesn't explain life. That doesn't explain our soul. That doesn't explain the complexity of the machine that is our body.

Until a scientist with access to all 108 known elements, and even those yet unknown can take these basic particles and turn them into even a single celled living organism, then I will continue to believe in God. For no matter how smart and how educated, no one person has been able to create life out of an array of elements, where no life existed before.

So for me to believe that our complicated planet, and the associated planets in our solar system could come together by a big bang or some other scientific, but undivine cataclysmic chance to create not only intelligent life, but life interdependent on other life forms, is about as unlikely as dropping a quart of milk on the floor and having it spill into a perfect outline of the United States.

Sheesh! Who knew there were so many theories about this out there!

I believe in the big bang theory and thereafter, the theory of evolution. I do not believe that a God or Goddess created everything.

I like this summation A WHOLE LOT!

Please show us these pictures from a credible location?? I would love to see these!
I did a search on google, and all I saw were Photoshop (clearly photoshop) compositions on Christian sites. I want to see one that is not, please...

I think you are right. I am not questioning your belief in something divine, but I want to point out that although I believe in evolution- that doesn't answer the question for how life originated and how everything came to be the way it is. So I am just pointing that out. My reasons for not believing in something divine has nothing to do with my belief in evolution, my reasons for not believing in anything divine is simply because there is no proof. Science doesn't know the answer to the origin of life question and no scientist is pretending to know. There are several hypotheses such as the RNA world hypothesis, which is the most famous one. Although many scientists have been creative and came up with a whole lot of hypothesis no one has even come close to designing a theory. A lot of people make the mistake to think that scientists are trying to claim that they know the answer to the origin of life..Like Skippy said, we know that life evolved, but we don't know what life evolved from, there still has to be the first organism before evolution can begin. And yea as i said I'd be more likely to believe that the first organism was an alien before I am likely to believe that there is a god...but for now I just admit to myself that I don't know enough to even make a guess as to how life originated. This is actually why I had a problem with this whole question. Evolution and creation are two completely different things...

I do not believe in God or any divine power however i respect everyones beliefs whether i do or dont. Im very scientific and sway very heavily towards fact and what i can see and touch, for example fossils that have been discovered. i dont understand how people can think the world has only been here 10,000 years when there are mountins of proof to prove otherwise. I dont think dispute that Jesus etc walked the planet but I dont think i've seen proof that he fed thousands with a loaf and 5 fish and turned water to wine

I really believe in evolution because if there was no such thing then all birds would look the same as would cats dogs fish etc and at a push people

But even if life on this planet evolved from an alien, that doesn't exclude the existence of a higher power or God, as even that alien life form would have to have an origin.

My belief in God or a Supreme Being or Intelligent Design or however you want to name it does not exclude my belief in evolution. No matter how we might want to delay the extinction of a particular species, it may be a bigger plan to eliminate a species that no longer contributes to the overall success of our planet.

Moreover, I believe we humans give ourselves too much credit for our ability to change the planet to something we consider more favorable or more harmful. Science has proved that the earth has gone through several cycles of heating and cooling with ice ages and great floods long before man could have an influence. I suspect that the planet will continue long after man has either evolved into another species or has become extinct all together.

I really like this post. I wish that I could have expressed my feelings this well.

Why thank you Pookie!