Creationism vs. Evolution

Essay # 64054

Biology
Education > Social Issues
Religion and Theology

This paper discusses the general arguments of creationism and evolution and the way they relate throughout history from the Scopes trial to the present day.

2,725 words () | 9 sources | MLA | 2005 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that creationism vs. evolution is a debate about how human beings got to where we are today, whether they were created by an all-powerful deity in the image of itself fairly recently (a few thousand years ago), or whether they evolved as a species from simians through Neanderthals to the present status of homo sapiens over millions and millions of years of natural selection. The author examines that the Scopes trial of the 1920s, which brought up the debate in the U.S. in the context of which explanation of the origin of humans would be taught in public schools. The paper objectively reviews each side of the issue by studying arguments from Darwin and others and then extends the context of the Scopes trial to the present day debate.

From the Paper:

"Unlike some Christian faiths which look to Genesis as a scientific text, the Catholic religion is amenable to treating the work as a metaphorical and idiomatic text that does not necessarily exclude evolutionary explanations provided by science, which explanations the religion encourages its members to consider as viable and acceptable without compromising their faith. In this religion, creation is thought of more in terms of the soul than the body, although this does not mean that religious practitioners do not refute the theological ramifications of evolution espoused by some, who tend to think of it as diametrically opposed to both the idea of original sin and the idea of Adam. The Catholic church does not endorse philosophical evolutionism. Thus, one could say that the Catholic religion views evolution as an interesting scientific principle that is something more than a hypothesis but less than a fact, and that accepting evolutionism is not necessarily the same thing as denying creation, which can be seen in religious rather than scientific terms as the formation of the soul rather than the body."