In Reply to: Re: Creation vs. Evolution posted by Carol (reposted) on August 21, 2004 at 14:16:17:
In the beginning.....
In the beginning there was belief that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day.
One day (or, if you will, several eons later), along came Charles Darwin with a theory that God had nothing to do with the process and in fact rested all seven days. Darwin's followers decided that maybe man could take a rest from God.
On the second day (one hundred years later), it was decided that Creation could not be taught in the public schools and that only the 'scientific' theory of evolution was permissable. Man, it was decided, had evolved slowly & gradually over long eons into the wonder that he was.
On the third day, Creationists became vocal and insisted that God had created the world & that there was no evidence in the fossil record for slow, gradual mutations. They tried to get Creationism back into public schools as a viable theory of beginnings, without success.
On the fourth day, Stephen J. Gould, an ardent evolutionary theorist, agreed with Creationists, stating that there was, after all, no evidence of slow, incremential changes in the fossil record. Darwin had asked, 'If my theory is correct, why do we not see innumerable changes in the fossils instead of sharply-defined species only?' Gould had an answer. He formulated a new evolutionary theory called 'punctuated equilibrium' (punk ek for short) stating that there were long periods of stasis (maintaining of the status quo, no changes)lasting millions of years, 'punctuated' by short periods of intense & rapid evolutionary change. The reason there was no record of endless mutations and hybrid forms in the fossil record, he maintained, was because all the changes had happened in the twinkling of an eye, like a magician's trick, too fast to be seen. Orbiting comets & meteorites may have been the punctuating disrupters of stasis.
On the fifth day, Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolutionists decried Gould as a traitor to the evolutionary camp & demanded he stop saying things that agreed with the Creationists, but by the time evening came on the fifth day, Gould was accepted as an renegade authority and evolutionary theory was divided into two squabbling camps: Darwinian & neo-Darwinian gradual change theorists on one hand & zippity-quick punk-ekers on the other.
On the sixth day (well, actually beginning about the third day), Creationists declared that the Flood was brought about by a giant meteorite hitting the earth & bringing down the water canopy in the Flood. Darwinists accused them of being catastrophe-mongers & repeated their claim that slow, incremential changes explained everything & there was no need for catastrophic events to explain anything, even the annihilation of the dinosaurs. Okay....so the extinction of the dinosaurs needed a little help. And yes, they got it. By the time evening of the sixth day rolled around, evolutionists had accepted as orthodox Darwinian theory that a monster meteorite had indeed hit the northern Yucatan peninsula and wiped out the dinosaurs.
On the seventh day, no one was resting yet. Creationists had till this time maintained that ample evidence showed that the Earth was created between 6 - 10,000 years ago, but now Philip Johnson wrote a book entitled "Darwin's Black Box" demonstrating how, on a molecular level, the theory of evolution fell apart, & arguing for the existence of an intelligent Creator. He disagreed with Young Earth Creationists that the world was young, however, & stated that it probably was as old as the evolutionists said -- billions of years. Johnson believed in what he called Old Earth Creationism, stating that God had created the different species at specific times over the eons.