I've always thought when people talk about evolution they mean that there is no god and that from the beginning something appeared out of nowhere then evolved on its own into something which then you repeat that process till you get to humans or something. So I thought it meant no god and things just happened all by themselves.
Creationism I think of what people mean is that god created the heavens and the earth. That god is real and he made the earth and us.
I hear Intelligent design in with creationism that says the universe was created by an intelligent being.
That's my thinking of what both mean. Is this right or not? Cus I don't honestly know if this is what people mean.
That's pretty close 👍
However, there is one simple point that needs to be stressed as it is massively important, and it's this:
The scientific theory of evolution does not specifically say anything about the existence of God, or His possible role in evolution. It merely reflects the facts of life on Earth as they are observed, and a key observation is that all species alive today show evidence of genetic relatedness, just as children do to their parents, indicating that all life on Earth today ultimately came from a single common source.
The original source of these ancestral lifeforms is a related, but separate, question. Some contend that God must have created life in the first place for evolution to have begun, while others contend that natural processes could have achieved this feat without the need for a divine guiding hand. The same argument also applies to evolution - some contend that it is 'guided' or 'directed' by an intelligent being, while others point to the fact that there is no evidence of this. Either way, the existence of God is an open question, and the existence of evolution doesn't prove the non-existence of God (but nor does it support the idea that God exists either). So, acceptance of evolution need not be equated with atheism, although I do accept that it can (and often does) lead people to question the role, and even the existence, of God.
Creationism, on the other hand, requires a belief in God for any of it to make any sense, and still it doesn't adequately explain what we actually observe (i.e. the relatedness of species) nearly as comprehensively as evolution theory (and indeed, some aspects of creationism actively require you to ignore the facts). Of course, an all powerful creator could presumably have designed species that
look like they are related, but that would beg some difficult questions, such as 'why would God do that?', 'does this mean that evidence of genetic relatedness is just an illusion?' and perhaps more interestingly, 'If God could design a web of life in any way He wanted, why did He choose to design life on Earth to look
exactly like it has evolved?'.
Many Christians accept evolution, but to do so they must have also accepted that the description of creation as in the Bible cannot be literally correct, but rather is allegorical. This is not a big problem for many Christians, but it is for many others. It is precisely because the facts of evolution contradict a strictly literal intepretation of the Bible that the vast majority of criticisms of evolution are not scientific, but religious. However, it is very important to stress that it is possible to accept evolution
and believe in God - even if some churches/religions would rather portray evolution as some kind of atheist conspiracy, and attempt to convince their followers that the facts of evolution are untrue.
