Does belief in evolution contradict a belief in God?

[Demoncrat7]

Answer the question above.

**Note: The question above does not ask about your personal beliefs. If you want to debate your views on religion, there's a thread about that somewhere else. I ask that this conversation be kept strictly to hypotheticals, please. Thanks.

 

[Dakare]

Well, I believe that it would contradict a belief in the Bible, but not necessarily God. You could believe that God created the world in the beginning with some one celled organisms, then watched it run its course, intervining to show that he indeed exists. So while I feel that a belief in evolution does not contradict a belief in God, it does contradict a belief in the Bible.

 

[webmasterbob]

Really, it depends on the religion; the Catholic Church for example *the Pope John Paul II I believe* stated that God created evolution to supply the building ground for humans *or so says my aunt, whom is Catholic*. Many religions, however, argue that believing that we evolved from something else contradicts God as per creation and the story of Adam and Eve. These individuals and individual religions are part of a group known as creationists, which includes virtually every Christian religion, some more so than others *again, the Catholics believe in evolution, however they still see God as creating the beginning, the universe, etc.* You can also see these religions getting into a boatload of their own theories, such as intelligent design.

This is really a rather complicated subject as there are so many religious groups with so many beliefs on the matter it can make one's head spin for eternity. As a general rule of thumb though *and this is purely by number of religions in each following that think so* you can safely assume in answering your question:

Most Christians would say yes
Most Hindu's believe in biological evolution, however very vaguely
Most Jews generally say no, although Orthodox Jews would answer yes
Most Islamic religions will say yes

The list can really go on, as it really depends on the specific God-believing religion in question; that, and the fundamentalism of the group judging your question.

 

[yoyolll]

It depends on how strictly religious you are. If you beleive in God and do everything you need to do for your religion, then it only depends on the religion accepting evolution.

If you beleive in God but beleive and worship it your own way, ideas of evolution and creationism can contradict your beleif only according to what your beleifs already are.

 

[Liriano]

I agree with webmasterbob. There really are so many different religions, so some may contradict and others may not, depending on which religion you stand.

 

[goboman11]

I've said it once and I'll say it again, God is the answer to why and not how.

There are people who believe the Adam and Eve creation story is really just a symbolic story to explain humankind's distance from God and sin entering our world and how sin grows as the world goes on (their decrease in ages).

 

[Versac]

It's times like these where you just know the agnostics are off in a corner chuckling to themselves. Of course not! A god can't be disproven at all! Or proven! A truly omnipitent diety would always be able to hide themselves, and the vast uncertainties of the universe would allow for any occurence! Now specific gods - those can be challenged. Nearly all religious texts have been taken as fact almost universally by their followers sometime in the past, but are becoming more and more symbolic. The core idea(l)s upon which most religions are based are inextiguishable so long as their ardents draw breath, but observable phenomena can contradict the specifics.

 

[IHeartNJ]

well. most of the time people who believe in God tend not to believe in evolution. altho i've heard of someone who believes in evolution but also believes in God. so, it really depends on how you think the world was created. If you believe that God made evolution possible then no. but if you believe evolution is purely scientific then yes.