Are you religious? Yes/No and Why

[Heald]

Evolution contradicts the story of Creation, which, by and large, is demonstrably (from a historical and theological perspective) an elaborate fairytale and a Frankenstein's monster-esque amalgamation of the various Creation stories of all the other religions floating about during the time of its inception. Not only is there absolutely no scientific basis for it, but large parts of it can be found in religions that pre-date Judaism and, by extension, Christianity. In fact, Genesis gives two rather separate accounts of Creation in an attempt to shoehorn as much of other religions' material into it as possible.

The reasons why the Theory of Evolution is so maligned by religious types are completely facetious. When Darwin first outlined the theory, the Church, by and large, was rather acceptive of it, with the typical 'wow, aren't God's creatures magnificent?' type stuff (nothing wrong with that, even if it is a little 'God of the Gaps'-ish). It was only when the realization that the Theory put forward that evolution was not an intelligent and loving thing but in fact a brutal, harsh, loveless, 'Survival of the Fittest' scenario sank in that the religious began to oppose it vehemently.

Evolution does not contradict religion at all. Evolution does contradict Creation stories that were cultural, rather than religious, but were since adopted by religions as a means of explaining why they were there and, more importantly, indoctrinating other cultures into their religion (for example, both cultures believe that they were created by the force that ripped apart the sea, earth and skies, but one culture is religious and says that God was that force, and then tells the other culture this in order to indoctrinate them). After all, being a thinking species that demands an answer for everything, coming up with a brilliantly colourful fairy-tale when your culture or civilization puts forward the question 'How were we created' is a much better answer than saying 'I don't know, stop thinking about it and get back to building pyramids' or some other equally true answer.