What is your religious perspective with regard to creation and evolution?

Answer 1

The manmade idea called the Theory of Evolution had its heyday in the Age of Enlightenment of the 19th and 20th Centuries. With advancements in the fields of science, this theory is being challenged on multiple fronts. Today, there is much debate on fundamental laws governing the entire universe. This is the Anthropic Principle: Many in the fields of mathematics and physics agree that from the very beginning - the Big Bang of some 15 billion years ago - these fundamental laws had to already be in place, and set exactly, to allow our universe to exist the way it does in our time - with us humans here. Indeed, mathematically, it is beyond improbability that this universe of ours would randomly come into existence with just the right properties to allow humans to exist. Life therefore requires a Lawgiver.

On the biological front, scientists are finding that intelligent design exists in everything they examine. In my school days, the simple cell was just that - an organism of matter with some vaguely identifiable parts within. Today, under very strong microscopes, we can see that the cell is a complex information-processing machine with tens of thousands of organelles and vastly complex protein molecules, each arranged in finely-tuned algorithms of communication and synthesis. And our human bodies contain some 60 trillion of these, which store information in DNA, replicated also in various forms of RNA, following the mathematical laws of information. To many, this shows Intelligent Design requiring a Designer and not random evolutionary change.

Just consider the human eye, which Charles Darwin, who fathered the modern theory of evolution, admitted that such complex organs as the eye would be difficult to explain using his theory. Or how about creating life from non-life as scientists have been attempting for decades now. Most have come to the conclusion that the law of Biogenesis is correct. Life can only come from life and requires a life-giver or Creator.

To conclude, one should also ask, how does evolution explain the mystery of human consciousness? Why do we know we know? Or how about dreams/visions or even the modern phenomenon of NDEs - near death experience. Without taking into account the God-given "Spirit in Man" (see Job 32:8 and 1 Corinthians 2:11), it is impossible IMHO. Yet rest assured, there will always be some scientists who, not wanting to believe in God, will remain determined to come up with some explanation which excludes Divine creation. Believers call these "fanciful theories" which attempt to explain the complexities of life. Reading most/all of these simply requires a huge leap in logic as they assume a mathematically improbable event "just happened to happen." For me then, Creation has the much stronger case.

Answer 2

It must always be remembered that religious perspectives are just that: strongly held statements of faith. They do not change the facts of nature, including the fact that evolution has been proven to have occurred.

My own perspective is that the two creation stories in the Book of Genesis were written at a time when people wanted to know where we come from and could not answer this other than by assuming supernatural intervention. We no longer need a religious explanation of where we came from, because we now have the evidence of evolution.

Of course, some people believe that evolution could undermine their own religious beliefs, and so refuse to accept evolution as fact. They may devise various pseudo-scientific 'proofs' that evolution could not have occurred, such as the supposition that the human eye is too complex to have evolved. However, biologists point to simpler forms of eyes that do exist in nature, right back to simple patches of light-sensitive skin. Whatever ideas creationists throw up against evolution, scientists have been able to show the falsity of those ideas.