World Issues

Nearly all religions have had creation stories to explain

the origin of life. These stories tell how the world and

all living things were created. There are two basic

arguments on how we got here, and those are simply

Scientific and Religious ( keep in mind that there are many

beliefs and it is impossible to speak for every one, this is

based on my research alone). The religious side says in one

way or another that a greater being, or god, created man

and all other life. Almost contrary to the religious story,

the Scientific side says that life came from chemical

reaction that started the evolution nearly 3.5 billion

years ago. I am going to tell about one idea from each

side.

In the Western world, the best known creation story

comes from the Book of Genesis in the Bible. This is the

way Genesis explains to us in the Bible how God made man: "

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And

the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon

the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the

face of the waters.

And God Said, Let there be light: and

there was light.

Ð'..... And God said, Let the waters under

the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the

dry land appear: and it was so.

Ð'.....And God said, Let the

waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that

hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the

open firmament of heaven.

And God created great whales,

and every living creature that moveth, which the waters

brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every

winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was

good.

Ð'.....And God said, Let us make man in our image, after

our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of

the sea, and over the fowl of the earth, and over every

creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God

created man in his own image, in the image of God created

he him; male and female created he them."Some religious

thinkers interpret the Biblical story of creation in

various ways. Some believe it occurred exactly as Genesis

says it did. Others think that the story is a symbolic

account of creation, which is a mystery which will never be

fully understood.

Alternate to Genesis' story, but not

totally non-religious, is the Scientific explanation, also

know as " spontaneous generation". This theory originated

in ancient times and remained a common belief for thousands

of years. The theory claimed that lower forms of life could

arise from nonliving matter. For example, people believed

that flies developed from decaying meat and that mice

formed from piles of old rags. But in modern theories,

scientists have proposed two major theories of the origin

of life. They are (1) the theory of panspermia and (2) the

theory of chemical evolution.The theory of panspermia

states that spores from some other part of the universe

landed on the earth and began to develop. However, some

scientists doubt that spores could survive a journey

through the harsh conditions of outer space. But even if

the theory is true, it explains only the origin of life and

nothing of how life arose in the universe.

The theory of

chemical evolution was developed independently during the

1920's by a Soviet biochemist