Creationism VS Evolution

As an enthusiastic student of the major religions, I look upon all of their - what are commonly referred to as - Creation myths with a certain ambivalence - not skepticism. I search for what they have in common with each other, rather than how they conflict - that's why, in a similar way, I have no problem with the many similarities between the stories of Buddhism & Christianity.

So, from my perspective, what we have in the Creationism -v- Evolution debate is the same Creation myth, told about two different Gods.

The God of Creationism is a can-do God, Jehovah. He's a bit like Donald Trump on The Apprentice, proud and ruthless. His believers claim that He created the world in 7 days.

The God of Evolution is cross between a mad scientist and a ditherer, who I refer to as the Great Sage Darwin. His believers claim that He created our world in 4.5 billion years.

To be candid, though, all the glory doesn't belong to him. The Great Sage Darwin has a wife, Mother Nature, who is every bit as proud and ruthless as Jehovah and is the real star of the show. However, She cleverly stays in the background, happy for our silly, patriarchal society to portray Her as "loving".

And the monkey?

Well, I'll get to him later!

GENESIS: DAY 1

On the first day, Jehovah is said to have created the Heavens & the Earth.

Genesis states that "Earth was formless and empty", that there was no light and all that existed were "waters"...

While the universe is thought to be 14 billion years old, Great Sage Darwinists essentially believe that Genesis Day 1 is a reasonably accurate approximation of what conditions on Earth were like at its creation, 4.5 billion years ago.

GENESIS: DAY 2

Also on the first day, Jehovah is said to have created light - resulting in night & day.

Then on the second day, Genesis states that He created the sky.

This corresponds with the settling of particulate matter (enabling light to appear) and the eventual creation of an atmosphere conducive to Life, starting about 4 billion years ago.

GENESIS: DAY 3

On the third day, Genesis states that Jehovah created land and all sorts of vegetation, including seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees that (we can deduce) Man would subsequently be able to eat.

With the first rocks dated at 4 billion years old and the first vegetation appearing about 500 million years ago, in the Paleozoic era, Great Sage Darwin is still in considerable concord with Jehovah at this stage.

GENESIS: DAY 4

On the fourth day, Genesis states that Jehovah created the Sun, the Moon and the stars - all to provide Man with light for the Earth.

Disaster! Great Sage Darwinists believe that, while the moon is only 400 million years old, the stars and the sun were created up to10 billion years before Day 1 of Genesis.

GENESIS: DAY 5

On the fifth day, Genesis states that Jehovah created "the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it".

Then He created the birds in air.

Great Sage Darwinists see this as a continuation of the Paleozoic era (500 - 250 million years ago), moving into the Mesozoic era (250 - 65 million years ago) and partially into the Paleogene era (65 - 23 million years ago).

GENESIS: DAY 6

Essentially, on the sixth day, Jehovah created reptiles and mammals, including livestock and dangerous animals.

This corresponds with the rest of the Paleogene era and then the Neogene era (23 - 2.5 million years ago).

GENESIS: DAY 7

And on the seventh day, God created Man, so that he could rule over all Nature. Genesis 2 goes on to describe that process: "Then Jehovah formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils and the man became a living person [i.e. Adam]".

Then Jehovah created the Garden of Eden for Adam and his mate-to-be, Eve, who He created by getting Adam "to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, Jehovah took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the opening.

Then Jehovah made a woman from the rib."

Simply by elimination, the creation of Man is therefore placed by Genesis in the Pleistocene era, which is precisely when Evolutionary scientists believe that Man first appeared.

Further, as The Daily Mail reported in December 2010, Evolutionary scientists believe that they may have discovered the oldest known human remains - two teeth - in Israel.

Interestingly, they were found in an area that is perhaps only 1000 miles from where Scientists believe to be the location of the Garden of Eden - as described in Genesis.

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Even in his own time, the English naturalist and gentleman scientist, Charles Darwin, received scathing criticism for the ramifications of his ground-breaking study, On The Origin Of The Species.

Very briefly, Darwin's On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life, details his findings and deductions from a 5 year field trip on the H.M.S. Beagle that went from London to Brazil, then to the Falkland Islands, around Tierra Del Fuego, up the South American coast to Chile, across to the Galapagos Islands, followed by Australia, Mauritius and South Africa.

However, it was in the Galapagos Islands that he made his most startling observations, where he observed that mockingbirds on adjoining islands, while similar, had adapted to different environmental pressures, to become completely separate species.

He said:

"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection*."

Darwin's extrapolations from these observations - that Evolution occurs in small incremental steps as a reaction to environment - have become the basis of modern Evolutionary theory.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, DDT began to be used as an agricultural insecticide, to devastating effect and the world beckoned a new era of bountiful harvests from pest-free crops.

However, within a few years, the insects rebounded, seemingly adapting with every new generation to become more and more immune to the insecticides and their' fight back was Evolution in action. Of course, it wasn't reported as such but that's what it was.

Similarly, many diseases such as the AIDS virus and even the common cold are continually mutating and Science is only playing catch up - as they can only try - because Evolution is the way of Nature!