Thursday 1 September 2011

Creationism: An Insult to the Amazing Reality of Nature?

Creationism versus Evolution is a debate that keeps on going, with many religious believers on the side of creationism trying to disprove and discredit evolution, using the "it's just a theory" line to its death. It's scientific fact that evolution is as much of a theory as gravity or electromagnetism, it's truth backed by mountains of evidence including DNA and fossil records. The history of evolution dates back millions of years, with species changing and adapting to their environments and the strongest genes surviving to pass on their genes to their offspring and so on. The whole story of evolution is both elegant and cruel, it's fascinating and explains where we as species come from.

In contrast creationism is a story deriving from the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament, saying that God created the heavens, the Earth, all the animals and then man from dirt and moulded him like clay, then made the woman from his rib and all in 6 days (some say it dates back 4,000-6,000 years ago). Of course, there is no real evidence to back this up just a story in a book and millions of people who have been brought up to believe it. Some creationists have tried to stop evolution being taught in schools, or at least have creationism taught along side evolution as equal theories. At first someone could be forgiven for suggesting the latter but creationism and evolution are NOT equal theories, not when one is backed by evidence and is scientifically established proof and the other is just subject to the faith of millions and was written about in an ancient book by people who did not know anything of modern science. It's much better to teach our children truth in schools and for science teacher to just teach science and not fairy tales. I find it an insult to our children to stop them learning about one of the most important discoveries in the last 200 years.

The story of creation does not explain anything, in fact I would argue that it raises more questions than it attempts to answer, such as "what was there before the world?", "did God create something out of nothing?", "where did God come from?" and "why did God create us only for us to fall?" and many more after that. The creation story does nothing to explain how we came to be, it's nothing more than a folk tale, that's why I would say it does insult the amazing reality of evolution and how nature became to be what it is today. I find it astounding when a creationist feels insulted when told that they share a common ancestor with apes but is happy to be told he is originally made from dirt.

Of course I am not suggesting that evolution disproves the existence of a God, whilst I am an atheist myself there are theists out there who understand that evolution is a fact and that creationism was just the go to hypothesis from a time where we had no knowledge of our origins. Is it so much to ask that creationists start to look at the world more objectively and read their holy books in the context of the time in which it was written? Creationism, it's an insult to our intelligence, knowledge and history whilst it belittles the amazing reality of nature.

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