Christians -- as well as many other religious groups -- believe in Intelligent Design, meaning we believe that all existence was designed rather than "just happening". However, Atheists and lots of Agnostics believe in Natural Selection and Darwinian Evolution instead, believing that the Universe began from a massive explosion of a massive glob of matter -- without a clue where that ball of matter came from, by the way -- and over the period of billions of years, a "primordial ooze" turned into humans.
My point with this post is not to debate the two viewpoints. Yes, I am a Christian and I believe in Intelligent Design... but don't fret, I'm not here to preach. My point is actually the same for both sides, in a way. The main idea is faith, which is commonly associated with religion. Many Atheists and Darwinian Evolutionists think faith is only for religious people and not for them, but that isn't true. Think about it: can you provide physical, observable evidence of one kind of creature becoming another? Not beak changes, but a living organism becoming an entirely different kind of living organism.
You can't, evolution says it happened over "millions and millions of years". Therefore, they examine the evidence and it leads them to believe evolution is the cause. They have faith that evolution is the truth, without seeing changes -- such as apes into humans -- with their own eyes. So while not all evolutionists are atheists and vice versa, evolutionists have faith just like Christians and other religious people.
As a Christian, I thought about all this and came to this conclusion: since the Christian Bible says God gave us free will and wants us to choose to follow him, Intelligent Design cannot be obvious. Think about it: if it was obvious, people would believe in it much easier and free will would be less of a factor in their choice. Therefore it is imperative that something combats that opinion, so that people need to have faith and follow their hearts to reach the truth.
This leads directly into my final point: you cannot prove -- or disprove -- either Intelligent Design or Natural Selection. Creationism and Evolutionism cannot be either proven or disproven, it is not possible with the abilities of the human brain. It is up to us to pick a side, to dig deep within ourselves and figure out what we believe and what we have faith in. So whether you believe what I believe or not, I ask one thing: know WHY you believe what you believe. Don't follow your beliefs blindly, and question EVERYTHING. It can help solidify your beliefs, or help you realize what makes more sense to you than what you currently believe.
On a final note, don't call anyone "wrong" for what they believe. In many areas, such as the one discussed in this post, there is no way to decide definitively whether or not someone is correct or incorrect.
-- Taken from Timothy McSwain's Quora Blog on Quora.com --
