Which came first, evolution or religion?

Question

The possibility of believing in both evolution and religion is heavily discussed topic lately. What is your personal opinion. Does one exclude the other, and if not, what is their convergence point/relationship? What about actual evidence?

Answer 1

Om

Answer 2

One can be religious and believe in evolution, in fact, there are religions that specifically believe in evolution...

belief in evolution only precludes the belief that creatures never change over time into other species, or that creatures were winked into existence whole, or otherwise assembled intact.

This typically only happens when a person belives in some sort of external force assembling the vast array of life on earth. Some believe in aliens transplanting the life on planet earth from another galaxy, some belive that some strange life form simply willed the various life forms on the planet into existence.

Many people of religions that include such creation myths choose to look at them as symbolic tales...for instance, the same way some people insist that the "beast with 7 horns" in the christian book of revelation represents rome or some other government or organization instead of an actual monster, some insist that the "6 days of creation" is not literal, but symbolic.

Some, however, insist that the creation myth is to be taken literally.

This is where some people can integrate evolution into their creationist religion, while others refuse to. It's a matter of whether one insists that the entire book be literal, or if one allows that symbolism may exist in some writings.

Answer 3

Evolution truly does not exist. It is very interesting to discuss this matter with those who do not believe in evolution because they most often will say either just "You're Wrong" or will use their basic high school knowledge to try to fight their argument. Kind of stupid, because all of the universe points to a creator. Without one, nothing could exist.

But after that side note, Christianity excludes evolution as it deviates from the story of creation. Christians who accept Darwin's theory are ignoring the Bible for a theory without absolute ground.

Answer 4

When sciense began to make such incredible headway into areas long thought unknowable (i;m talking early age of reason....early through mid 1800's) the concept of the clockwork God developed. It no longer made sense to say the Earth didn't revolve around the sun (just as it no longer makes sense to deny evolution, but some flat earthers still have breath), so theologists began to imagine a God who set the wheels in motion. The thinking goes something like this....maybe man did evolve...but it was God that caused evolution.

That thinking began to be replaced by the Kierkegaard existentialist concept of God in the later 18th century. Basicly religion and sciense have the same end result...controlling our environment and uncontrollable parts of the environemnt. Especially death. Religion offers the supernatural explenation, and promises to stop death with the promise of an afterlife. Sciense does it by actually extending human life. Religion is no different now then it was in ancient Greece when someone who didn't understand what the sun was called it a God.

Answer 5

I trully disagree with Charles Darwin theory of natural selection, the basis for the theory of Evolution which dictates.that man could not be omitted from his process and likewise had to evolve from a lower creature as well but from one deemed the most similar.. which happened to be the primates. I dont think there is convergence or correlation with what religion has to say about this. In my opinion, evolution is out of the question. imagine a prototype ape man evolving to so called homo sapien.? How can it happen? possibilities of contingent developing of primate's anatomical and biological systems naturally till it developed into a Homo Sapien? In my opinion, if this theory works, how come the contigency of the evolution has stopped?. By this time around now, we should have evolved into something higher than Homo Sapien. What would it be? it goes the same with other creatures in this earth-plants, animals etc. If they all naturally capacitated to evolve into more complex form, nothing seems changing so far,since the famous Darwinian Theory was immortalized. Apple tree still is an apple tree, or is it a pear tree evolved from it?
In Philosophy, the beginning of life(man)-is the incorporation of immaterial form(soul) to accidence(our skin color, body shape,hair, eyes color etc).It also patronizes that the universe is created, designed and organized by a supreme being, the divine organizer. The way I see it, it correlates to Theology.
In theology, life begins with Adam and Eve. . They unionized and procreated. Cain, Abel, and Seth going down to the generation of Jesus Christ.God the Father created everything good in his likeness.(although I have to admit i am meticulous about that serpent in the garden of Eden).
Going back to your question, though I don't believe it is a valid question, I'd say religion would have came first because God would have created the primates for us humans to evolve from. But i don't believe there was evolution. So I say, Religion came first nothing followed after as to question of how life began, the world, universe and everything around it.

Answer 6

Religion has existed in one form or another sine the dawn of man. Evolution is a theory that is only 150 years old.
They do not cancel each other and can be thought of as converging in the intelligent design theory. I do not think their relationship is inverse and the evidence for both is a matter of record.
Technically speaking, religion is man made. Evolution is something that has been occuring for the past 4 billion years.

Answer 7

First of all, make sure you know exactly what evolution means. Does it mean that we evolved from monkeys? Heck, no. It means that organisms have the ability to adapt to their environments and change over time.

We KNOW that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. We KNOW that evolution takes place in all animals, including humans. We evolved smaller jaws due to the nature of our diet; thus many people need to have their wisdom teeth extracted. We no longer need our appendix as well as other vestigial organs. Choosing to believe that evolution does not exist is ignorance.

It is established that evolved, or, changed over time. Is that such a bad thing? Wouldn't God WANT us to have the ability to adapt to our ever-changing environment?

It says in the Bible that the earth was created in 7 days. That is contradictory to the evidence to support the age of the earth. Have you ever wondered that perhaps God's time is different from our own? Another idea is that when the book of Genesis was written, man could not yet comprehend the passage of billions of years so it was simplified into something that would be understood. Who really knows.

Or perhaps we should not believe religious dogma and distrust anything created by the hands of man, including the Bible. God sure didn't fax it down from heaven. Man is imperfect. How could he be trusted to deliver God's true message?

I hope my thoughts were of some help.

Answer 8

Evolution. Only humans have religion, and we have only been here a few million years, while evolution has been going on way longer than that.

The thing with evolution is that you don't need god so it is just an extra step that explains nothing and makes more questions to be answered.

Answer 9

Evolution is a proven fact, and provides useful predictions about the way the world works. Religion can predict nothing (this is provable). Religion requires belief in supernatural phenomena; science explicitly excludes such phenomena. It follows that there can be no convergence.

Answer 10

If you ask me, I'd say 'show me proof'. I don't believe in either one until I've seen something that proves the existence of a 'god' or that the evolutionary theory is indeed correct (It's not entirely concrete, even though it's accepted as fact). Don't ask me how I think we got here then, cuz I believe in the here and now. What does it matter how we got here? We're here, we've been given life, why not live it to the fullest instead of worrying about the past?

Answer 11

The theory of evolution is nothing more than science fiction, there is no correlation between your question and even so any main stream organized religion does not recognize evolution because man was created first before animal.