Creationism vs Evolution?

     Greetings and salutations!!  May the love of our Lord Jesus be with you.  I am writing this post in one of the most exciting places here in Georgia.  I am in the north Georgia Mountains hanging out with some of the most amazing people I have recently meet.  I am on a retreat with my current parishes core team retreat.  I am surrounded by nature, and I am soaking all of this in, and began to wonder how this all came to be, and it hit me what I would like to talk about, and that is creationism vs evolution, and if we accept the theory are we still able to be called Christians?

     This was something that I struggled with as a teenager and a young adult.  Through out middle school, high school and some college years we are always taught the theory of the Big Bang and the theory of Evolution.  The theory of evolution states that there is a change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations.  That the process of evolution will give rise to the diversity of the species at every level of the species, including individual organisms, and molecules.  This is what I was taught all through out my formative years.  As students we sometimes accept these theory as truth, and never question the teacher teaching these theories.  This one I struggled with for a long time.  I saw all the scientific proof of this theory at work at the time it was "Lucy" who we thought to be the oldest human ancestor, and how we evolved from that.  So, when creationism came up on night in a youth group meeting at my church I scoffed at it.  Saying show me the proof that God just magically made things appear out of thin air.  As I got older my view began to change, to the point where I was thinking that yeah this could happen.  Even older still I graduated college with a degree in theological studies, and have found that we can still accept the theory of evolution and still believe in our Creator.

     The Youcat answers this question, and the answer is Yes.  We can accept this theory and still believe in a creator.  We can accept this theory because it is a different kind of knowledge, our faith is open to the findings and hypotheses of this theory and all the sciences.  Theology has no scientific competence, and the sciences have no theological competence.  The study of natural science cannot in the view of being a Catholic Christian rule out that there is a purposeful processes in the creation of the world, and all of its inhabitants.  Thus our faith is unable to define just how this process take place in the development of nature.  As a Christian we are only able to accept this theory as a help explanatory model, so long as we avoid the pitfalls of evolutionism, which says we (meaning man) are not a random product of the biological process.  The theory of evolution implies that the existence of something that can develop.  What this never states is where that "something" has come from.  Even further in this is the question about essence, dignity, mission or meaning of this world is unable to be answered by this theory.  The theory of evolution can and does overstep into theological realm, strict creationism can over step their bounds in the scientific realm.  Creationist often times blindly take the biblical information that is given to be literal [Youcat 42].

So, can there be a health balance to this.  I believe that there can be a balance.  As someone who loves science and having things logically put to me.  I believe that science can only take us so far in understanding, and our faith to acknowledge that our God was the one that created all that we are able to share in on this earth.