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The Origins Debate

Creationism & evolution are the two major competing theories (not necessarily in the sense of scientific theory) of the origin of the universe. Creationism (at least, the variant I believe in) claims that a supreme being (God) created all forms of life in each of their different kinds (not including things such as mules & the various different breeds of dog/cat/etc.). Evolution claims that the various existing lifeforms "evolved" from earlier organisms.

Nothing can be absolutely proven. Whatever may appear to be true, it is always possible that something internally entirely different, but externally isomorphic, may actually be the case. Furthermore, people often percieve what they want to, rather than what is really there. I say this so no one thinks I am claiming to prove anything conclusively.

Creationism & evolution give rise to quite different world views. If one accepts creationism (at least, the Christian version), then humans were created in the image of God, & therefore are set apart from the plants, animals, fungi, etc. This in turn means that human life is more valuable than other life. Evolution (at least, the secular version) supposes that whatever organism is most fit to survive is the most important/best. Interestingly, it seems that humans have the advantage here (due to our mental facilities), & are therefore more important than other life forms whether one believes in creationism or evolution. The difference is that under creationism, humans will always be above all other living things, while under evolution, something else could evolve beyond us, or we could create artificial life better able to survive, & therefore more important, than ourselves.

To determine whether creationism or evolution is true, the best we can do is to look to what we know of the past & evaluate it. For example, if we look at fossils, we must ask why there are no known intermediate ones (sorry, fake ones do not count). Also, we must ask how bacteria & animals, for example, have two different systems of decoding DNA into proteins - if one evolved from the other, we would expect them to be the same (otherwise most of the entire sequence of DNA would have to be rewritten at the same time the encoding changed, or it would not work at all).

Both sides have at times done dishonest things to further their cause. However, we cannot throw out an entire system if one person involved in it does something wrong. If this were the case, then surely we must throw out mathematics, since plenty of people have tried to divide by 0 or make lossless compression which always results in shorter files, myself included (that is not to imply that those could never be done - just that they are not allowed under our present system, nor any forseeable system). If both sides would follow the rules of logic (& common sense - I have heard statements from creationists & evolutionists that, while logically sound, were absolutely absurd in light of the real world), we might be able to have a reasonable debate.

If the Bible is true, people are accountable to God. On the other hand, if there is no supreme being, men & women can do whatever they please. It seems that atheists want to have it both ways - they want others to be accountable to them, but they do not want to be accountable to anyone else but themselves. In a sense, they want to be gods. Perhaps we should really call them idiotheists. I have no problem with being accountable to God - I have more fun than most non-Christians I know of, & I would wager that a lot of it is directly related to my relationship with Him.

As for where this universe really came from, it may not even exist at all. It could concieveably be the solution to some mathematical equation that no one (in a higher universe) has ever evaluated, but since we are trapped inside of it, we should assume that it works the way in which it seems to work. (Never mind that mathematics itself would still have to somehow exist.)

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