Creation Theory: Evolution Vs. Creationism

Evolution vs. Creationism by Verda Kamal
The origin of mankind has been a topic of interest for everyone, from a microbiologist to the layman, for hundreds of years. Different theories had been postulated to explain it but none of them elucidated the process as well as the theory proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859 known as ‘The Darwin Theory.’ The latter came as a shock to the monotheistic religious groups who believed a divine power to be responsible for the creation of humanity rather than just an evolutionary process. The Catholics were one such religious group which, while opposing ‘The Darwin Theory’ conducted research to scrutinize the idea in detail. The Darwin Theory is accepted globally and is an integral part of the students’
Microevolution is concerned with mutations in the DNA of an organism who, in this case, is a human. Natural selection brings out the notion of ‘the survival of the fittest.’ In the same way, speciation deals with the emergence of an altogether new species which is unable to mate with a member of its previous species (Evolution of Man-Theory Concepts). So basically, Darwin stated that the similarities between humans and chimpanzees (or apes) are not due to coincidence but are present due to the fact that both of them evolved from a common ancestor. On the other hand, ‘The Theory of Creationism’ portrays a totally different picture. According to the Catholic Christians, God is the sole Creator of man and the process of creation is not that easy to explain as it is not the work of a human being but the work of someone
The Book of Genesis is merely a book of religious revelations, not a textbook of astronomy or biology!’(Soltis). On the other hand, the Catholic religious scholars believe that science and religion go hand in hand and that science is used to explain religion and, therefore, the presence of a Divine Entity. A Catholic Aquinas expert from Boston College, Steven Pope, combined the two different perspectives saying that “Evolution is God’s way of creating.” However, Edward Furton from the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania disagrees and says that one of the basic teachings like “treat others the way you would like to be treated is incompatible with a philosophy of the survival of the fittest.” The problem is like St. Thomas Aquinas said, “it is just as rational to claim that the world has existed for all eternity as it is to claim that the world was created at a specific moment”(Soltis) i.e. we cannot just say that a theory is right because it can’t be proved wrong or there exists no other theory to replace