What is natural selection and does it contradict creation?

Answer 1

Natural selection is the driving force behind evolution, and an observable fact about nature. It is how species adapt to their environment in congress with spontaneous genetic mutation and other evolutionary mechanisms.

Does it contradict with creation? Depends what you mean by creation.

Darwin believed in a creator, he talked about "the creator" in the first book about evolution On The Origin Of Species. But unlike the average christian who believes god created all life as-is in one week, he believed a god (not neccesarily the god of any one religion) created the simplest form of microscopic life, and all life evolved from there.

That life evolved gradually, that all life has a common line of descent or "family tree" etc, are all widely accepted as fact by scientists and has been conclusively demonstrated through the fossil record and genetics.

Interestingly The Bible does not just give the standard "god made everything in six days" creation account, in the first two chapters of genesis it gives two accounts, one says god created the plants and the animals, the other says he let the earth do it.

This is not an explicit mention of darwinian evolution, more likely a reference to the ancient concept that the earth can produce life, whether that ability is god-given or not.

A Somewhat More Technical Answer Natural Selection, at its most basic, is simply differential reproductive success. If I possess a variant of a heritable trait that allows me to raise more offspring successfully than those with other variants of that trait, my variant will become more common in the population. This is not an assumption or theoretical proposition. It is a logical, observable, reproducible, demographic fact. As such, it cannot contradict creation because creation says nothing about natural selection. If anything, creation contradicts the concept of common descent,which is another part of the general theory of evolution. A more general answer Natural selection, in its original form, was merely the theory that organisms will gradually change over time because of factors in the organism's environment. For example, if two groups of a particular kind of organism find themselves in different environments - say that one group is placed in an area with one kind of predator and the other groups is placed in an environment with a different predator - the two groups will eventually change on a biological level to have different characteristics which help defend them against the particular predator they face. If they change sufficiently enough, the two groups will no longer be able to interbreed, and will become separate species.

Answer 2

Controversies may arise between religious individuals, scientists, and atheist (non-religious) individuals. Christians, for example, believe God created man, and from man created woman; thus, many of them do not believe in any aspect of evolution. So those who claim a religion may not agree with the idea of natural selection like scientists and atheists do. _______________ Amongst scientists and the educated populace there is no controversy and there has not been one for about 150 years.

Answer 3

There is so much controversy because people really don't know what happened, with different religious views no-one can be sure what really happened, although certain sides may think they have sufficient evidence, this is not seen sufficient enough to the other side to change their mind as they also have sufficient evidence.

Some people use their religious belief as evidence. Others use Darwin's theory of evolution as evidence, it just depends on what you believe, which is why there is so much controversy... because no-one really knows the answer:)