2008-07-13, 11:17 PM
The way this poll was structured made me a little uncomfortable. I'm a pretty strong atheist that believes in evolution. However, the theory of evolution has no need of knowing what created everything, be it God or a first cause or whatever you think created the universe, if anything.
All you do is dictate the conditions of a certain species and environment and obtain certain patterns of development by applying the theory of evolution. It has no need of answering where things came from for it to work.
For that reason I think the poll is a bit weird because even though I voted Evolution, I kind of felt that maybe I should vote Both due to the fact that anything could have started the process, and it doesn't matter what it was. Creationism and primarily Christianity is certainly destructive and deterring the fact of evolution from being taught, but more general definitions of God really have no bearing on it at all. So Evolution and (specific versions of) Creationism do clash ALL THE TIME, but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I hope my thoughts were clear.
All you do is dictate the conditions of a certain species and environment and obtain certain patterns of development by applying the theory of evolution. It has no need of answering where things came from for it to work.
For that reason I think the poll is a bit weird because even though I voted Evolution, I kind of felt that maybe I should vote Both due to the fact that anything could have started the process, and it doesn't matter what it was. Creationism and primarily Christianity is certainly destructive and deterring the fact of evolution from being taught, but more general definitions of God really have no bearing on it at all. So Evolution and (specific versions of) Creationism do clash ALL THE TIME, but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I hope my thoughts were clear.