Random Pips

I haven’t forgotten my promise. I’ve just been a bit caught up with rehearsals of Inherit The Wind (which, by the way, will be opening at the Wood Street School in Whitehorse, YT on April 18th-28th @ 8 p.m.)…hence the lack of new posts.

Well, the moment you have been waiting for is finally here. Welcome to my highly controversial discussion on Creationism vs. Evolutionism. Please fasten your seatbelts and feel free to use the oxygen mask above you should hyperventilation occur.

The first stage: we shall take a look at what Creationism is. There is a belief that the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, we humans, and all living matter on the Earth were created by one supreme, supernatural being: God, Allah, Brahman, Waheguru, or Demiurge - depending on which religion or faith you connect the most with. Of course, the time scale of the Creation varies across different religions and beliefs but ultimately, they are similar in that we are a miracle that came into existence through the hands of a deity whose powers are beyond our comprehension.

In the debate between Creationism and Evolutionism, it is the Christians or more specifically, the “Christian fundamentalists”, who provide the loudest voice in asserting Creationism as the absolute truth. According to Genesis in the Old Testament, God brought Man into existence on the sixth day of the seven-day Creation process:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” - Genesis 1:26-29

The Bible then continues to describe in detail how God created the first man, Adam, “from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7) as well as the first woman, Eve, “from the rib he had taken out of the man” (Genesis 2:22). The theory is that the rest of the human race eventually flourished from Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve
(Artwork courtesy of: latribunedelart.com)

Now, let us examine Evolutionism. It is the belief that humans came into existence through a gradual process of natural selection and genetic variations over millions of years. Therefore, from cells that slowly developed into different animals of various shapes and sizes, apes were formed that eventually branched out into Homo sapiens - us modern humans.

Evolutionary thought actually existed long before Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published - all the way back to the Ancient Greeks and Chinese. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle paraphrased Empedocles’ words on his theory not unlike natural selection:

Why should not Nature work…of necessity?…[Some] things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish.

During his study of the history of scientific development in China, Joseph Needham observed that “the Taoists elaborated what comes very near to a statement of a theory of evolution. At least they firmly denied the fixity of biological species”.

However, despite his eccentric belief in the superiority of certain human races, Charles Darwin must be given credit for firmly establishing evolutionary thought in modern society. The Origin of Species, published in 1859, revolutionized the ideas of human origins (which had been predominantly pro-Creationism due to the heavy influence of Christian churches throughout Europe). The last sentence in the book was a fitting conclusion for his controversial idea:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been , and are being, evolved.

Now that we have established exactly what Creationism and Evolutionism is, I shall present my personal view on the origins of humans. Please stay tuned for “Part 2” of Human Origins: Creationism Plus Evolutionism.