What are your views on the Theory of Evolution?

 My view is the same as the scientific mainstream.  Evolution is by far the best explanation for the change of life through time and for most similarities among organisms seen today.


Since creationism is in the news today, I'll add this:


A religion is a set of beliefs and practices that are believed in despite the fact that they cannot be proved to most people's satisfaction. Adhering to a religion requires a "leap of faith" by its adherents.


Science is a set of self-correcting methods for discovering how nature works, and the body of knowledge developed using those methods. A theory is a concept that has been tested against scientific knowledge and does a good job of explaining it. Most people agree upon the explanation given by a scientific theory.


Evolution does not explain the origin of life. It explains how life developed over time. Evolution has nothing to say about the existence or nonexistence of God or any other supernatural being. A large proportion of scientists, including evolutionary scientists, believe in Christianity or another religion.


Evolution is in conflict with Genesis Chapter 1, the other creation stories in the Old Testament, and with the creation stories of other religions. That is not because creation stories claim to explain the _origin_ of life; evolution does not address the _origin_ of life. It is because creation stories explain the origins of species, or "kinds," or whatever terminolgy you use, separately from each other and evolution explains that each species arose from an earlier species by natural selection acting upon random mutations.


(Did you know that the Old Testament contains several versions of the creation story and that these versions are in conflict with each other?)


Intelligent design is a variety of the pseudoscience of creationism, which was created by Christian fundamentalists.


The Christian doctrine of creation, as understood by mainstream Christians, teaches that God created and sustains the universe. It does not specify whether the original creation was accomplished by divine creation (creation ex nihlo), the Big Bang, or by another means.


Fundamentalists believe that the Bible is inherently and infallibly true. They fear that if any aspect of the Bible is not "literally true" (that it doesn't mean what they interpret it to mean), then the salvation promised by Jesus was a lie.


This extreme belief, coupled with general knowledge of science, has led fundamentalists to create a set of beliefs to rationalize their interpretation of the Bible with their knowledge of science. That set of pseudoscientific beliefs has evolved from creationism to scientific creationism, to intelligent design.


By far, the large majority of Christians do not link the factual correctness of the Bible to the spiritual truths it reveals and the promise of salvation made by Jesus.


Thus, by a wide margin, most Christians believe in the doctrine of creation, but do not believe in the pseudoscience of creationism, whatever name it goes by.

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