Evolution and Creation

I think when discussing this topic we need to distinguish exactly what is meant by the labels "creationist" and "evolutionist" as I really do not think that these words refer to mutually exclusive concepts.

1) Evolution(ist) is probably the easier of the two to understand, which in this context I take to mean something along the lines of "a theory that explains the origin of complex biological organisms from simpler organisms, through Darwins theory of natural selection acting in a non-teleological fashion upon genes". Perhaps what is important to notice is that this does NOT say anything about God, nor does it explain how the first "life" came about.

2) Creation(ist) has all sorts of loaded meanings, however in its simplest from merely means someone who believes that God created the universe/life/us. Using this definition being a creationist is not incompatible with accepting the mechanism of evolution for creation.

HOWEVER there are also three other defnitions of "Creationist" which are not compatible with evolutionary theory, namely 6-day or Young Earth Creationism (YEC), Old Earth Creationism (OEC) and Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC). What is interesting is that such movements are actually fairly modern reactions TO science rather than some form of religious orthodoxy. Granted prior to Darwin there was no alternative to direct supernatural causation as the mechanism for creation, however despite this need for the supernatural within Christian/European thinking much of the reason for the scientific revolution in Europe was actually due to Christianity teaching that a separating between God and nature (the book of life) was OK. Indeed the response to Darwin amongst theologians was not too different from the response he received from scientists - mixed reaction at first followed by almost complete acceptance within about 50 to 100 years. As such, far from representing some form of orthodoxy, YEC, OEC and IDC actually represent fairly modern UN-orthodox responses by Christians.

This historical background is helpful to see where the disagreement comes from as it has direct relevance to the two areas of contention regarding origins - namely the interpretation of evidence and the understanding of philosophical consequences. My experience is that the latter (the philosophical consequences) actually distort the former (the scientific evidence) so much that it is not actually worth arguing about the scientific evidence. Note I AM NOT saying the scientific evidence is not important, but rather that we need to examine our philosophical baggage before we can stand a chance of fairly understanding the science.