HOMEWORK: Evolution & Creation

I have an assignment for you. Your job is to help me with one of my assignments. For this conversation book, I am supposed to write a short essay (250-300 words) about creation and evolution along with a few discussion questions. The intended audience is Christian, Buddhist, and non-religious young adults and full-on adults in South Korea.

Please tell me how this is wrong. What am I missing? What should be changed, deleted or added? I will need to simplify it before it goes into the text (level 5 of 6). You have one or two weeks to reply, but don't wait, do it now.

This is my rough draft, non-inflamatory overview:


Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? These questions are part of the human experience. The answers we find are greatly affected by our belief in either creation or evolution as the origin of life.

Evolutionary theory teaches that compounds began to form in pools of hot chemical soup millions of years ago. Once the most basic organisms began to form, the two major forces of evolution—mutation and natural selection—led to increasingly complex organisms.

In contrast to blind evolution, the theory of creation teaches that God purposefully created the universe and all plant and animal life. The final act of creation was making humans in God’s image with the ability to love, make choices, and create new life.

This debate is often heated and unfriendly. Evolutionists are labeled as ungodly, and creationists are seen as ignorant and closed-minded. These labels make it difficult to analyze the scientific data in an unbiased manner.

The debate is growing because a majority of scientists in public universities support evolution, while creationists feel that its inconsistencies are overlooked. Many supporters of creationism argue that the theory of intelligent design (ID) should be taught along with evolution in public schools. Intelligent design holds that life is too complex to have happened naturally.

Because the scientific method is most useful for studying phenomena that can be tested repeatedly in a controlled environment, it is not well suited to answer questions of ultimate origins.

Both sides of the debate have evidence and theories, but neither has proof that can convince the critics. Consequently, this argument shows no signs of becoming extinct.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How important is the creation/evolution debate to you?
2. What evidence would convince you to believe in either creationism or evolution?
3. What evidence are you aware of for either creationism or evolution?
4. What do you think public schools should teach about evolution?
5. Why are people often disrespectful toward those who disagree with them?
6. What types of questions (topics?) is the scientific method unable to answer?