Evolution vs.Creationism Essay -- essays research papers

Evolution Vs Creationism People have always wondered how life originated and how so many different kinds of plants and animals arose. Stories of a supernatural creation of life developed among many peoples. The Bible, for example, tells of God's creation of humans and other higher animals over several days. Many people also believed that insects, worms, and other lower creatures spontaneously generated from mud and decay. Long after these stories became rooted in tradition, scientists began to question them. Albert Einstein said, "The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." (Creation 9). The first serious attack on the idea of spontaneous generation of life was made in 1668 by Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, who proved that maggots did not arise spontaneously in decaying matter, as commonly believed, but from eggs deposited there by flies. Proof that microorganisms are not generated spontaneously came in the 1860s, when Louis Pasteur, a French scientist, showed that they, too, develop from preexisting life. Evolution can be defined in many ways. One of the most respected evolutionary biologists has defined biological evolution as follows: "In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions." (Futuyma, 11) Exactly how evolution occurs is still debated but it is a scientific fact that it does occur. Most biologists believe that... ...nism vs. Evolution rages in the American popular culture. The tension between how people interpret the Bible and what people believe that they have learned through science has been with us for a long time. The fact is science and the Bible is both needed to find the truth. This complex topic presents many issues such as faith, scientific reasoning, and personal beliefs. This generation would probably be more inclined to believe in evolution rather than creationism, merely because today's educational system does not teach creationism as much as evolution. We are taught that science answers everything. Personally after researching the theory of evolution it is more real and not so fictional and fairy-tale like as creationism. Work Cited (Britannica) McHenry, Robert ed. The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Delusion-Frenssen. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992. (Creation 9.) No Answers In Genesis. http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/. Darwin, Charles The Origin Of Species (Darwin) McHenry, Robert ed. The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Ceara-Deluc. 15th Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992. (Douglas J. Futuyma.) The World As I See It. New York: Watts & Co, 1975