2009 may be the year of St. Paul, but it's also the year of Charles Darwin, as anyone who watches or listens to the BBC will know. We hear these days a lot about what seem to be two “camps” - especially in the USA – the “Creationists” and the “Evolutionists”. I don't see the two trains of thought as being at odds – read on and you'll find out why.

On the one hand we have the Creationists. God made the world in 6 days, and then took a day's holiday to recover, as told in the Book of Genesis. He made all living things as seen. The layers of rock that make up the geological record were assembled in one go – at one command from God – complete with fossils, ripple marks, cross-bedding and all the other features geologists have come to recognise. Some Creationists argue also that the time scale of it all – a matter of thousands, not millions, of years - means that dinosaurs lived at the same time as humans.

The we have the Evolutionists. They generally accept the “Big Bang” theory for how the Solar System was formed, over an immeasurable and unimaginable period of time. All is governed by chance. Life emerged gradually, from random chemical reactions, and from these primitive organisms evolved the plants and animals we see around us, in all their diversity and beauty, with the fittest surviving, adapting and evolving, and those which did not keep up becoming extinct.

I am both a Creationist and an Evolutionist. Let me give you my simple explanation. The Genesis story is a beautiful allegory. The writer was indeed inspired by God, to set down an explanation of the origin of life in a ways that the people of the time could fully understand and accept. Genesis basically got everything in the correct order, even though I think the writer got it a bit wrong about the formation of woman (as scientists will tell us that the “default setting” for an embryo child is female...but that takes us to another argument altogether)!

I studied geography and geology. The natural world is utterly astounding in its order and beauty. Every acorn has the potential to grow into an oak tree – and only an oak tree. Every crystal has a specific formula defining its form, and may demonstrate atom-perfect straight lines (so don't believe anyone who says there are no straight lines in nature!). Sunflower seeds are arranged to a mathematical precision which can be accurately quantified (known as the Fibonacci Sequence) and this is seen elsewhere in nature. The geological record gives us a wonderful insight into how the world once was, which we can interpret using what we know about today.

So, how can Genesis and Darwin both be right? Well, I would ask the Evolutionists the following questions. What or who made the “Big Bang” happen – and created the elements to allow it to happen in the first place? Who invented the Fibonacci Sequence ? Who designed the acorn and programmed it to grow into an oak tree? I think you know MY answer to these questions.

And what about the Book of Genesis? The seven-day time scale, integral to the hard-line Creationist viewpoint, has a simple explanation. Just check out what the psalmist wrote in Psalm 90.

“For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday passing, or like one watch of the night.” (Alternative Service Book Ps.90 v 4).

So don't let the timescale of Genesis put you off – measurement of time is a conceit of humans, not of God. Seven days is seven microseconds and, at the same time, seven million million years to the Almighty – so don't try to confine Him to our earth-bound concepts of time. Just let us give thanks to God for His wonderful creation – and take great care of it.

Ruth Sharville