Creation or Evolution?

This is an interesting topic for discussion on a sports gaming site. I've never really been satisfied with either, to be honest. I have done biblical studies and worked in Greek and Hebrew, and the biblical texts are fraught with all kinds of interpretive difficulties that make it difficult for me to take that creation story at face value. Among those difficulties are the authorship issue with the Pentateuch, the evolving but conflicted Yahwhistic theology in Genesis, and the fact that there are actually two different creation stories in that first book.

Still, the larger point is that things were made, not produced by chance. The narrative element of religious discourse is painfully obvious, but what leaves me unsatisfied about science is that it needs a narrative as well and the narrative of the Big Bang just isn't compelling to me. I'm no biologist (I study American literature), but the body is a marvel, and I'm not sure how chance could have produced it. Furthermore, I don't really find the idea of beneficial mutation that cogent; usually we call it deformity, and I've yet to meet someone with an extra arm/leg/eye that worked and put them ahead of their peers.

I don't think the debate will ever go away because we have an insatiable desire to know more than we can, and from my perspective, there's simply no way to know if there's a god or not, if we are all alone or have company in the universe, if we were fearfully and wonderfully made or just the product of colliding atoms.

Well they allow religious and political discusion in arenas so why not? I'm sort of in the same place as you. Neither route makes that much since to me but creation makes more since to me as it actually explains the beginning. I would still call myself a religious man but I still don't get where the heck Cain's wife came from or why we're living on earth if god already knows who's going to heaven and hell. It's just extremely confusing. I just choose to put my faith in god and hope he will guide me to him and answers.

I'd say something very eloquent but it's too late in the day; in any event I agree with you wholeheartedly...Just like a building must have an artitech to design, establish blueprints, create a foundation, etc. the same rule applies to creation. A building doesn't magically appear from a *Big Bang* so how would something as marvelous as Earth