Biblical Creationism versus Scientific Origin Essay -- Science Religio

Commonly, religious discussion turns to the subject of origins. There are two reasons for this: firstly, there are those with a literal or semi-literal interpretation of the Bible (or other relevant holy book) who remain convinced that the world was created in the recent past looking more or less as it does today. Obviously, this issue must be resolved before the existence or nature of the deity can even begin to be discussed! Secondly, even those with the more common, nonliteral interpretation of the creation story often use arguments that aren't valid to insist on direct interference by a deity at one or more points in the past. And while thanks to its flexibility this "tinkering" God theory cannot be ruled out to the same degree as literal interpretation story potentially can, its proponents should still be aware that there's little justification from the evidence for it, and that the majority of the story of our origins can now be explained in a secular manner. The basic idea: scientific knowledge, as we know it, is not incompatible with a creator. But it most certainly does not require one. I think it would be prudent to define a few terms first. Evolution: The change in life over long time scales by descent with modification through natural selection, except when used in astronomical context (where it refers to slow changes in stars and galaxies.) Creationism: Specifically, I use this to mean Christian young-earth creationism; the belief that Earth was created in 6 literal days as written in Genesis 1. Taxon: a division of life: kingdom, phylum, class, species, etc, or an example of such a division (Animals, Chordates, Mammals, Humans, etc) Geological Epochs: Precambrian (4500-545 Mya): Primordial epoch; from th... ...by not giving it an opportunity to form crystals. Once an opportunity occurs, the water will almost instantly transform into ice, perhaps shattering the container it is contained within as it expands. Something like this happens, but at the quantum level, rather than the chemical bond level: in this case, the so-called strong nuclear force separates from the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces (all three had formerly been the same entity), causing space to exert a fantastically powerful repulsive force that inflates the universe by a factor of about 10^20 in about 10^-32 seconds. This force then dies off, leaving the universe to expand at a roughly constant rate through the present day. That's the outline of the theory, and it agrees very well with the observations above. You're free to form your own philosophical interpretation of the origin of the universe.