Is there a grand design? A deity that is the ultimate puppeteer? What if we are nothing more than an entertainment for an alien civilization that is light years away?Or is our existence here on Earth, all of our experiences, birthday parties, falling in love, having children…all by chance? Just a roll of the cosmic dice?

I was raised in an extremely religious home, yet even as a child I began to question the teachings of Sunday school and our Pastor.How in the world was it possible to create the heavens and Earth in just 7 days? Who was there to witness this? How can we be sure that with all of the revisions over the years that the original message of the Bible hasn’t been grossly reinterpreted or even completely fabricated as nothing more than a tool to control and strike fear in the hearts of man?

4,000 years ago they needed a way to govern their people. What better way than to make people believe that if for any reason they didn’t do as they were told they would face eternal damnation in a pit of fire? These were my questions.

For me, science makes sense. There has to be proof in front of you. Carbon dating and fossils do not lie. A book written by man very well could. If it started out as a truth, over the years it could have easily been deviated.Of course the thought of there being an Omni present watching down on us, helping along the way and answering prayers is comforting but is it even realistic?

There is scientific PROOF that we all, we as in ALL organisms, originated from one original ATOM, not ADAM. See how they did that?

How in the world could Noah have single handedly built a vessel large enough and sturdy enough to house thousands of creatures? In a debate between Scientist Bill Nye and Creationist Ken Ham on February 4^th, 2014, Nye brings about the question. How did Noah design and build a 500 foot long vessel, with only 8 zookeepers that tended to 14,000 creatures for a whole year?

The debate on creationism vs. evolutionism is a relatively new argument, considering how old the Earth is. Man didn’t really have any reason to question the Bible, or whatever story of creation different religions told, until men like Charles Darwin, Jean- Baptiste de Lamarck and Alfred Russel Wallace came along stirring the pot.

As far as scientific discovery goes into the origins of life and evolution, Charles Darwin’s time spent aboard the “Beagle” during a 5 year voyage proved to be the most prolific of his time, or possibly any time. Darwin cataloged species everywhere he traveled, but a 5 week stop in the Galapagos Islands birthed two major theories. 1. Common descent with modification and 2. natural selection. Darwin cataloged 13 species of Finch that had evolved from one single species of Finch native to South America. He proposed that over time, and not a short amount, but over generations, these birds evolved to better thrive in their environment.

While it seems like a sensible explanation for the variations of different species, it sent the religious communities into an uproar. It turned everything they had taught on its ear.

Of course in the Bible, God created man and every living creature, which suggests that everything as we now know it, was placed here purposely by God and with no help from evolution. The Bible only dates back 4000 years, the Code of Hammurabi existed before that. There were very sophisticated civilizations in the world dating back before the Creationists “beginning of time”. The Earth is dated at 4.5 BILLION years old. How on Earth do creationists account for the billions of years they aren’t mentioning in the Bible?

Let’s backtrack a bit.

“According to the Genesis Flood, God created the universe and gave the Earth all of its life forms in six days. All of the fossils that exist today had to be the remains of creatures that died after the fall of Adam, because before that time, there was no death in the world.”

Creation scientists claim that it was Adam and Eve’s fall from paradise that became the driving force behind the concept of entropy, by which scientists explain the phenomenon of increasing disorder in a given system.

Entropy itself, or essentially the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, is essentially the very reason our planet exists. Science describes the “Big Bang” Theory” as the beginning of our whole universe. No one knows exactly when it happened or what happened during it, but because of it, a cosmic glitch if you will, the “heavens” gave rise to a complex and diverse solar system which included our planet. It took evolution millions upon millions of years to produce a single celled life form, let alone humans just popping up out of thin air.

Through years of research it has been found that our real ancient ancestors were once tree dwelling creatures, primates, dating back 55 MYA, that gave rise to a more ape like being, thus giving rise to Australopithecus afarensis, giving rise to Homo ergaster, whom gave rise to Homo neanderthalensis, that gave rise to Homo erectus and finally Homo sapiens. As in Darwin’s theory of natural selection, over the course of history, like all creatures, we have adapted to the ever changing environments.

This further explains the different ethnicities and cultures throughout the world. Through creationism or “historical” or “biblical” science as Ken Ham (President of “Answers in Genesis” and of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY.) offers, the differences in humans around the world can be explained through the Biblical story, “The Tower of Babel”.

Even in 2014 you can look in the sky and see the closest thing to a dinosaur we will ever come in contact with. Birds, not reptiles, are the last direct living descendants of the great beasts that once roamed the Earth freely. Though reptiles did give rise to all of our current mammals.

No matter what scientific concrete proof there is, Creationists find a way to rationalize everything to fit into their neat and packaged Bible.

Here lies one of the major problems between the two groups, especially when it comes to educating children. The two perspectives are so vastly different it’s almost impossible to teach both. While I am sure there could be a paper on just this alone, I will share but one brief example of this problem in education. In 1974, in Kanawha County, West Virginia, Alice Moore, a minister’s wife, led a very spirited campaign to ban 175 books chosen as part of the language arts curriculum in the Kanawha County school system. Moore, and other conservative parents considered these 175 books immoral and “un-Christian”, in part, because some taught evolution as a fact.

Why on Earth wouldn’t people want their children to have access to all knowledge available to them? Science is not the devil. Science is not immoral, but there is such a pressure by religion that there are Science professionals who shy away from teaching evolution for fear of judgment by their Christian counterparts.

“Some biology teachers may accept evolution, but not teach it because of pressure from parents, administrators, and others to ignore evolution. This pressure, which has been documented in several studies, often causes teachers to ignore, downplay, or de-emphasize evolution in their courses.”

Furthermore, “Bills that would undermine the teaching of evolution have been introduced in several state legislatures. An Arkansas bill prohibiting the teaching of "fraud"-including, they claim, Archaeopteryx and various fossil hominids-was only narrowly defeated. The Education Committee of the Michigan House is considering a bill calling evolution an "unproven theory" and specifying that students be taught "intelligent design" theory, a catchphrase for creationism. A Louisiana resolution took an unexpected approach, asserting that Darwin was a racist whose evolutionary theory was responsible for Hitler's genocidal pursuit of an Aryan master race.

That resolution passed the Louisiana House, but only after references to Darwin were removed.” This journal piece suggests that, in short, the debate over evolution vs. creation in schools isn’t about fact at all, it is political, and the laws will be molded to the dominant voting party. No politician wants to appear “immoral” or “un- Christian” like to their constituents.

Religion is such a powerful force in this nation, is it so powerful that it is actually stunting the education of our youth? Christians and/or Creationists fight against scientific evidence so vehemently that they begin to almost sound like conspiracy theorists.

Ken Ham is a perfect example of this. In the post-debate interview on February 4^th, 2014, on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live, he explained global warming as punishment from God, an angry deity for our fall from grace and that the Earth is simply winding down towards the end, the Apocalypse. Nye again confronts him on any kind of proof or explanation for the snow ice dating, for proof of a “great flood” and instead of providing any evidence, he begins spouting religious rhetoric from the Bible. This is a prime example of what seems to be almost a brainwashing of the Christian population. This is something I have encountered not only in the research for this paper, but in debating science, religion, politics and life in general with Christians. There is no way but THEIR way, and in my opinion that is an extreme problem. These people are mothers and fathers, they are passing down their very narrow minded religious views to their children, who in turn pass it to their children and so on. I’m not opposed to religion, please understand that, but I do have a difficult time accepting that there is only one way and all others are wrong.

Based on my prior beliefs and opinions, as well as this research, I feel this is something that will never see a resolution and will continue to be debated until the end of time. As science progresses, maybe we will have more definitive answers in regards to the exact occurrence of the “Big Bang” or maybe a great earthquake or volcano eruption will unearth further clues into the history of this planet, but as of now, there is a never ending battle between two very different communities.

I feel after this research, that somehow I had been lied to my whole childhood, coming from a deeply religious family, I had a very limited scope as far as science and creation goes. As I got older and began to question everything that had been taught to me, I faced ridicule and extreme hostility from people who should have supported and nurtured my desire for knowledge.

My children however, were fortunate enough to grow up in an environment that encouraged an inquisitive nature. No religious stances were forced upon them and they were able to form their own opinions and beliefs.

I still would love to think that even as I work on this article, there is a God, or some sort of deity, looking down on us from the Heavens, gently guiding us through our time on Earth.

Unfortunately, that is something I might never find an answer to. Maybe in an afterlife, if it exists.

Life as we know it is easily explained by the Earth itself, and the story that it tells, not one written by man.