Im confused.. If God created everything then what is Science trying to teach us about evolution?

Question

Im not christian so if someone would like to tell me the God side of things I would most appreciate it. Also a more in depth explanation of the Big Bang theory would be nice. Thanks.

Answer 1

I agree with Paul's excellent answer. Contrary to what you may have been told ... evolution is NOT contrary to the belief that "God created everything".

Think of it this way. Where did you come from? I.e. does God create each and every person? You might say yes. But then science also tells us that every person is the result of sexual reproduction that produces a fertilized zygote that grows (gestates) into an embryo, a fetus, and a baby. Science studies this developmental process (gestation) in excrutiating detail.

Are those two descriptions of the creation of a human being incompatible? Are "God created the baby" and "the process of gestation in the womb created the baby" two incompatible statements? No. It is quite consistent to believe that God creates babies using the process of gestation.

The same is true for evolution. "God created everything" and "evolution created everything" are NOT incompatible statements. It is quite consistent to believe that God created everything using the process of evolution.

Science does not deny God. Science only says that the statement "God created everything" is not enough. And thank God that it does! If we just threw our hands up and said "OK, God created everything so there's no need to ask further questions", science would have come grinding to a halt in about 1400. There would be no medicine, no astronomy, no chemistry, no physics, no iPods, no computers, no Internet, and I wouldn't be typing the words that are reaching your eyeballs at this very instant.

Now, as for the Big Bang ...

First, it's very important to keep the Big Bang theory separate from the theory of evolution. The Big Bang is about the origins of the known universe. Evolution is theory about how single celled organisms evolved into all the species known today ... it's not even about the origin of life, much less the universe. The Big Bang is astrophysics. Evolution is biology. They are not connected AT ALL. Either one could be absolutely false while the other is absolutely true.

The Big Bang started as a way of explaining the discovery that the universe can be seen to be expanding. Far away galaxies are receding away from us faster than near galaxies. It's like the entire universe like dots on the surface of a baloon that is growing ... the dots are all getting further apart.

This means that long ago the universe was much smaller. In fact, based on the current measurements of the expansion, about 13.7 billion years ago, the universe would be infinitessimally small ... smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

The phrase "Big Bang" was intended as a way of ridiculing the theory ... but the name stuck. It made a lot of scientists rather nervous because it resembled Creation a bit too much ... it pointed to a finite universe, with a finite age, and a finite moment of creation. (BTW, it always baffles me that modern Creationists, rather than rejoice at a theory that points to scientific evidence of a specific moment of creation, instead *vilify* the Big Bang theory for the sole reason that it doesn't sync up with the Creationist age of the creation of only 6,000 years ago. Think about it. If it wasn't for that single (although enormous) inconsistency (which is based on obscure passages listing the geneology from Adam to Moses), then the Big Bang theory sounds an awful lot like "let there be light".)

Since that initial motivation for the Big Bang, it has found further evidence. E.g. it predicted that we should find a tiny underlying radiation in the universe, coming from all directions, as an echo of the Big Bang, and even predicted the exact properties of this radiation if that 13.7 billion year age is correct. It also predicted the precise balance of the lighter elements (hydrogen and helium) that we would expect in stars and galaxies. It also predicted a precise distribution of galaxies, and the properties by which galaxies form.

All of these predictions were born out! Does that mean that the Big Bang is proven? No. No theory is ever considered "proven" in science. But the Big Bang is the best scientific theory so far that explains all those pieces of evidence.

Sorry the answer was so long ... but you asked two *good* (but long) questions.

Answer 2

I know an atheist who does not believe in evolution. Just because you do not believe in evolution does not automatically make you a Christian. Also, in reply to the previous answers which claimed that extinction PROVES evolution, that is the most UNSCIENTIFIC claim that can be made. A TRUE scientist does not try and prove anything, but merely to discover about the world. A true scientist is open to all possibilities and never closes his mind on an idea simply because it is not what he believes to be true. If a scientist did so, then he would no longer be a scientist, he would be someone who was putting FAITH in science, not actually completing unbiased experiments. Even Darwin, the principal founder of the belief in evolution once quoted from his book, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,


"A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each equation."
-Charles Darwin

This is why I, as a Christian, never close my mind to the possibility of evolution, but I also keep open the possibility of a creation, for there is evidence for BOTH arguments. And if you people who say that evolution is absolutely PROVED, I suggest you read some unbiased text books which you will not find in the schools.

Answer 3

You have two excellent answers here, so I 'm only answering to add that Science and Religion answer two completely different questions, and that's often why there seems to be incompatibility when people try to force an answer from each on the same question. Science answers with facts, and what we know. Religion answers why and what purpose. Religion has never been about facts, because how do you "prove" that you are doing something because it feels like the right thing to do? Religion is based on our own experiences, and science is based on outside observation. Evolution is primarily a theory based on observed facts of fossil records, DNA similarities etc. The theory fills in the gaps, but it doesn't necessarily make it right. At one time scientists thought they knew introns in genes were "junk" DNA, now it turns out they have all kinds of uses including being the coding regions for genes reading in the opposite direction.

Some camps believe that God absolutely created life as we know it, but that evolution is part of the system that was created.

Answer 4

Be prepared for some very weird answers for this question!

Science is trying to teach us that evolution means that we probably all came from a common ancestor. There are variations in the details, but that is "evolution in a nutshell". Some fundamentalists will say that it means that we came from monkeys (false - we are actually biologically classified as apes - monkeys have prehensile tails and we don't), that it defies the second law of thermodynamics (false), that there is no evidence for it (false), that is it "only a theory" - which shows a complete lack of understanding of the word "theory" in a scientific context, and that it denies the existence of God (false). Evolution is the process of how life changes over time - an understanding of DNA works makes evolution a "slam dunk", but some people just don't want to listen to what they are being told - you can't change their minds because they aren't really interested in listening to the other side - they've already made up their minds so don't try to confuse them with the facts. Extinction proves evolution, but you will get a lot of argument about that from the non-scientist that says "its only a theory".

There are many books written on the Big Bang, but it says in a nutshell that the universe originated from a huge explosion billions of years ago from a space so tiny that it isn't even considered to be a space - something called a "singularity".

As to whether God had anything to do with either one of these phenomena is up to you to decide. As for me, I'm only a man - I'm not going to tell God what to do.

Answer 5

There is no convincing proof that any gods exist. There is strong evidence for evolution but none for creation by Yahweh, brahma, Allah, Yu Ti, Odin, Zeus, Jove or the Spaghetti Monster.

Answer 6

Because there is no God. He's invented everyday to keep idiots busy.

Try getting confused over more substantial things.