I had thought of something the other day and thought I would just say it. I don't think there was another topic for it.

I think that evolution and the creation might be the same thing. The creation took place in seven days, but in the bible it says "A day is as a thousand years" which could be interpreted a couple of different ways. One, literally, to God a day equals a thousand years. Or two, time means absolutely nothing to God and it can't be measured, which is how I'm taking it.

So I thought, maybe the creation was just an easier way of explaining evolution. They happen in the same order (as far as I know); day and night, sea, sea animals, land plants and animals, humans, then he rests. This is where the time means nothing deal comes in. It didn't actually take seven days, but it's still going on. That we are actually still in the "seven days". And when the day comes when God rests, it's the end of days. To me this makes sense, but maybe not to everyone.

These are two diametricly opposed ideas.

Creation: God made the univerise and everthing in it. God made man and all the animals jusat as they are. The have always been this way, never changed. Never got bigger, smaller, faster, slower.....

[B]Evolution (darwin)[/B]: Basicly, life stated by enzimes geting togather. More to the point, all types of creatures change to suit their environment and those changes which make that creature best able to survive continue-servival of the fittest.

Do people really expect the bible should comes with the periodic table in the appendix?...sigh

For the creation story in Genesis 1, I feel I need to point out a few things.

1. This account of the events were not actually written down until the events at Mt. Sinai (which is where God appeared to the Israelites and gave Moses the Ten Commandments and other assorted laws). God (presumably) gave the account of creation also to Moses at this time.

2. It is possible that the creation account is not literal. The writing style used in this chapter of the Bible is very poetic.

1st day - "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3)
4th day - "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night" (v14)

2nd day - "Let there be an expanse between the waters to seperate the water from water... God called the expanse sky" (v6-8)
5th day - "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky" (v20)

3rd day - "Let the water unders the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.... Let the land produce vegetation....(v9-11)
6th day - "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds" (v24)

Notice the symmetry in how the 1st and 4th, the 2nd and 5th, and the 3rd and 6th days relate to each other in a poetic manner. The implication thus is that it should not be taken absolutely literally

3. That's not to say though that creationism is wrong. But the purpose of the book of Genesis may not have been to portray an absolutely "factual" account of these events, rather to get one main point across - that we are here because of God.

Creationism and evolution do not have to be mutually exclusive. God often works through the mundane, natural world. It is a distinct possibility that God decided to create the world by implementing the process of evolution

The Creation, as with most of Genesis, is an amalgamation of 2 different stories anyway.

Creation stories are common to all cultures.

They exist because of man's inate desire to explain everything.

Genesis could be interpreted as a poetic account of evolution. It can also be interpreted as proof we were genetically created by aliens....... But it's best treated as exactly what it is: a myth written to explain what at the time seemed inexplicable. A bit like Kipling's 'Just So' stories really

Our modern creation myth involves dust clouds and primeval soup and billions of years of evolution. It does not exclude the possibility of a divine being though

Well, I suppose it depends on which Genesis you take...

If you take Genesis 1, then its ok... if you take 2, then it doesnt fit.

Ultimately, putting God into the evolution loop would not only be pointless, it would be bad science.

It would be pointless because evolutionary theory, or more precisely, abiogenesis, would not be changed at all. Saying "God did it" would elicit nothing greater than a shrug from these theories, for the simple reason that these theories are complete in and of themselves. It would be similar to putting toast in a toaster, having it pop up, and then claiming God was responsible for the entire electrical process that caused it to happen. At most, you would get a shrug from the person trying to have breakfast. The toaster already has an explanation as to why it works as it does. Putting God into the equation would not change it in any way shape or form.

It would also be bad science for the simple reason that one cannot use something that has no imperical or logical existance to support a theory. Until such time as objective evidence to the existance of God and his properties are found, there is no way to use Him in science. As an example, we can say that, instead of God, it was Harry Potter who was responsible for creation/evolution. There is really nothing that would need to be changed in the argument, even though you have switched out the very basis of the argument.

Alternatively, if you simply wish to believe that God does exist, and that evolution is correct, and chances are good that the writers of the bible simply goofed somewhere in the 3000 year history of it, I sincerely doubt God would mind.

My take on the whole God business is simple. We are in a dream, God is the dreamer. Why not? People have dreams every night and whats to say the people in our dreams arent real? Maybe to them we are the imaginary people in their dream.

People always bring up that a day is a thousand years, but it doesn't pertain to creation. God created Adam on day six, so it would've been a thousand years until day seven. On the day that God rested, the seventh day, it would've been another thousand years added to Adam's age, so Adam would've been over 2,000 years old, but the bible says he lived only 900 something years.

what of prebiotic evolution, dissipative structures in the functioning of bioorganisms, co-evolution......

sorry, creation is just an old wives tale "created" to give some answer before we began to have a grasp on understanding.

How interesting that every ancient society has their own version of creation and deities.

it all has to do with what i refer to as the primative mind. the basic first needs to explain one's environment, and create an order suited to survival. Nothing surprising about it.

True.....

But does that thus negate the existence of God?

Perhaps God created humans with a genetic need to know Him and that genetic need has manifested itself in each culture and its beliefs.

The existence of these stories throughout history may actually verify the existence of God.

Just a thought

Well, since saying that God created evolution neither negates, nor affirms the theory, I doesn't matter to me. Since evolution is a self-contained theory it needs no outside support, and it will not change it if God is involved.

Also if God exists and evolution is correct, it does not have to mean that some bible writers goofed up. They probably would not be able to understand what all the little mechanisms of biology that cause evolution, so God may have given them an allegory to help them understand.

Besides everyone knows Voldemort made evolution.