Evolution and creation

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The theory of evolution and the creation model address major aspects of the origins debate.

About 15% of American adults are evolutionists, 40% are Old Earth creationists, and 45% are Young Earth creationists.

The fossil record

Evolutionists see the rock layers containing the fossil record as a sequence that was laid down over vast periods of time.

Therefore, evolutionists regard fossils as indicating the place and time period during which various species of life existed, so the first appearance equates to when they came into being, and the last appearance indicates when they went extinct. Naturalistic geologists and biologists conclude from this that forms of life came into being over a period of hundreds of millions of years.

Old Earth creationists agree with evolutionists that the fossil record indicates the appearance and disappearance of living things over time.

Young Earth creationists see the vast majority of the rock layers as a sequence that was laid down during the Genesis Flood. They argue on biblical grounds that the earth is less than 10,000 years old (usually arguing for around 6,000 years old), and that the fossils in flood-laid sediments must also be around 4,300 years old.

Kinds, species, and baramin

The Bible describes God creating living things "according to their kinds".

In the Latin translation of the Bible, the word "kind" is species, so Carlos Linnaeus, who invented the system of taxonomy, chose this word as the basic unit of his classification system. However, the definition of species as used by scientists today is somewhat arbitrary and problematic. For example, one aspect of the definition of species is that to be considered the same species, living things have to interbreed naturally. Thus two groups of squirrels on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon are classified as two separate species despite being able to interbreed, because they cannot do so naturally, due to being separated by the canyon. As species is defined by the ability to interbreed, it is impossible to determine the species of creatures known only from the fossil record, but palaeontologists categorise fossils into species anyway.

Young-Earth creationists have coined the term baramin, from the Hebrew words for "created kind" and have begun researching and classifying living things according to their baramin.

Why new forms of life appeared

Physical causes (such as mutation) can alter the genetic material in the member of a species. These changes are passed on to the member's descendants, although natural selection tends to weed out detrimental changes. Depending on the changes, enough might accumulate to the point where some of the descendants are not interfertile with others, so they will be classified as a new species. This process is known as speciation.

According to evolutionists, every species of life descended from other species, all the way back to one-celled organisms. They believe that natural causes alone are sufficient to account for the emergence of all forms of life.

Not all old-Earth creationists accept common descent, especially in regards to people. They also disagree about the sufficiency of natural causes: God must have intervened to make all major changes (see macroevolution, missing link).

Young Earth creationists agree that speciation occurs, but deny that it can introduce new features, and argue that it can only occur within the created kind (baramin). Thus they reject common descent.