Is it possible for a person to be believe in BOTH evolution AND creationism. What are your reasons?

Answer 1

Yes, I can't see how they are mutually exclusive.

God created the world in a way that it can evolve. If you read Genesis, the creation story, the animals are created in the same order scientists say evolution happened. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so.

Also, evolution has been proven, cross species evolution has not. That seems to confuse a lot of people. For example, cattle are bred to be better milk producers, or more meat. If you believe that can happen... you do believe in evolution.

Answer 2

Yes it is possible. The Bible says God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th. We all know that it wasn't created in 6 actual days. So, when God created Man it must have taken longer than a day to us....thus it's reasonable to think that Man's evolution was the process of that creation. That's the way I tend to think of it. Many fundamentalists would disagree and that's ok with me. I hope this helped....

p.s. The guy who answered below me isn't quite correct on evolution being a fact. Evolution is a theory. It's a theory that hasn't been disproven to be more accurate....Relativity is a theory and so is gravity. These are theories that we have come to believe to be true....but they remain theories. But don't believe me. Ask any science teacher or professor. That's where I got that from.

Answer 3

You believe whatever lets you sleep at night. When you find something that discredits your beliefs, you are allowed to change them. If you believe a "God" put us on Earth, and gave us the ability to change.... then don't let anyone tell you anything different.

I will say a couple of things though... evolution is a fact. "Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population from generation to generation. These traits are the expression of genes that are copied and passed on to offspring during reproduction. Mutations in these genes can produce new or altered traits, resulting in heritable differences (genetic variation) between organisms. New traits can also come from transfer of genes between populations, as in migration, or between species, in horizontal gene transfer. Evolution occurs when these heritable differences become more common or rare in a population, either non-randomly through natural selection or randomly through genetic drift." - Species change over time, to adapt to the environment. That is why some of these mutations stay around; because they help the species survive.

I don't know about creation... It is still up in the air for me. But if you truly believe in it, then of course you can still believe evolution. If it makes sense to you, then stick with it.

Ha ha... I have to ask, did the guy above me have a personal conversation with Darwin? Oh and by the way... the bible is not the oldest document. How many versions are there? Oh, and how old is the oldest one in existence today? I am pretty sure he doesn't understand what evolution is... it is not morphing one species into another. Oh I can't even address the issues with him any more.

My advice, follow your heart. Oh, and ignore the tool above me.

Answer 4

Yes you can!

They are both theories and one must study all to make their personal decisions. Unless someone comes along and says here is the real deal. and Then it is call the Principal of Creation or Evolution Till then study both.

Argument in favor of Creationism: Principal of Physics "Matter can neither be created or destroyed" so where did it come from?

Argument in Favor of Evolution:

Many people who argue against evolution do so because they do not understand it. The straw-man caricatures of evolution commonly presented by creationists are indeed illogical, implausible and unscientific. But they are precisely that - straw men - and do not accurately represent what evolutionary theory really says. When presented in its true form, the theory of evolution is not only simple and plausible, but the only explanation of biological diversity that is scientific and consistent with the facts.

Unfortunately, creationists work through the political process, not the scientific one. They spread misinformation as to what evolution is and work to prevent its teaching in public schools so that people do not learn the truth. These people then reject evolution based on their creationist-generated misunderstandings of it, and a vicious cycle is perpetuated. This essay will attempt to clear the air and show how creationist caricatures of evolution are faulty.

So what is evolution? In its simplest sense, evolution can be defined as change over time, and that is what the theory of biological evolution means at the most basic level: a change in the frequency of alleles in a population over time. Alleles are different versions of genes that control specific traits. To slightly oversimplify, there is, for example, a gene that controls what color eyes you will have. One version of this gene - one allele - codes for brown eyes, another allele codes for green eyes, a third allele for blue eyes, and so on. Evolution states that over time in a population of living things, some alleles become more common and eventually dominate, while others become less common and may disappear altogether


Did you notice the first half of the argument is bashing the creationists :)

I love both.

Answer 5

Certainly. The Bible says God created the world in 6 days - but fails to mention how long a day was. The Bible also claims various people lived 100's of years - does that mean the same 365 days we use? Hmmm....the Vatican acutally altered the year many centuries ago and deleted, I believe, 11 days from the calandar to "correct" it. Long after Jesus, Galileo said the earth was not the center of the universe and the sun did not revolve around it (OK, that idea was actually much older, Copernicus? Hmmm...I don't recall). We have a leap year every 4 years to correct the inexact time frame we call a "year".

If the values used for days, months, and years changed during human civilization, who's to say one of God's first 6 days wasn't actually millions of years - and thus enough time for dinosaurs and evolution to take place? I believe the earth is a little petri dish that God messes around with from time to time to see how all of us monkeys deal with things.

Answer 6

The argument of "Intelligent Design" incorporates aspects of both evolution and creationism. This argument accepts all the scientific fossil evidence, and all the genetic and other empirical evidences for evolution. However, it does not accept that the universe and all it contains is merely a product of accident, or natural selection. Rather it accepts that consciousness is part of the equation for reality. The universe and all it contains can only be a product of an intelligent designer.

This is also consistent with modern quantum theory which tell us that the fundamental bits of reality are random and only given order when we observe them.

Answer 7

Its very possible. The bible was written by man ( which we all know is falable ) & dosen't perfectly explain everything. Is it not possible that the Bible explains the why & evolution the how?
You could think of it as 2 reports. One is a step by step procedure for how something was done & the timeline, The other explains the persons emotions and reasoning for doing it.
The conflict then only comes from the fact that both sides feel that only their side can be correct & that they refuse to acknowledge that there could be more to the picture.

Answer 8

Absolutely. I don't know the creative process that God used to make man. Who's to say that his "7 days" isn't equal to millions of years. Perhaps he started with a mix of chemicals in a primordial stew, then brewed up some creatures that evolved into the first Man and Woman (Adam and Eve). Adam and Eve were special, had some extra DNA and great minds. They understood sin (being bad), and fell out of grace. My opinion is that the Bible stories are primarily meant as teachings of what is wrong / right and help us to understand how God wants us to act. Yes, some are direct truths - but really, how many snakes talk.

Answer 9

I believe that God created everything, but evolution has occured after the fact. Why is that such a dilema for everyone? Everything living has DNA & DNA changes every time something gives off offspring- even if only minutely. God is the creator of every living thing but every living thing changes over time. That's believing in both.

Answer 10

Of course. God could have designed (created) the parameters for evolution on this planet, and could have intervened in subtle and not so subtle ways in earth's history.

Since cosmological arguments are still so speculative, for most people to grapple with a completely random causation for purposeless life on earth is counter-intuitive.

How can randomness and the interplay of physical forces bound by eternally constant laws of physics account for the universe's existence and its development. These do not. Eg, what existed before the theorized Big Bang, what triggered the Big Bang, who or what established the Laws of Physics that controlled the Big Bang and all subsequent events?

Did the Laws of Physics pop up out of nothing?

Just like cosmology, evolution is a descriptive theory of the probable mechanisms of the earth's history of living creatures.

It seems woefully inadequate to believe based on highly recreated conditions in a lab that complex DNA structures somehow bubbled up out of a primordial soup cooked by the earth's heat and struck by lightening.

It these hypotheses satisfy you, then consider that it is also possible for amino acids, for example, to form and exist in deep space. http://www.williams.edu/Astronomy/cosmos/updates/chapter20_cosmos.html

Perhaps different DNA-like compounds were introduced on earth many times during its history from extraterrestrial sources.

A teleological argument and hypothesis are much more intuitive and feasible, I think, to most people's understanding.

It is much easier to accept a teleological argument as hypothesis for our history and that of our limited understanding of the cosmos.