...God's, or evolution's?
I think I should really stop reading the paper. It just makes me angry. This time there is an appalling article headlined "Half of UK population 'believe in creationism' ". Now I am no theologian but I know perfectly well that the theories of 'creationism' and 'intelligent design' are two completely different things. I am sure that the most hardline of athiests would concede this. Half the UK population does not believe in creationism; this statistic is made up of the majority that think it likely that the universe had an intelligent designer rather than occurring purely by chance, and the minority who believe the Genesis account literally, which is the true definition of creationism.
As the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin approaches, the main point here is that these two groups of people, unceremoniously lumped together, are both under attack from Richard Dawkins. However, this is completely unfounded; intelligent design does not necessarily deny evolution, whereas creationism does. A fairly critical difference, you might say. The magazine New Scientist, for all its anti-religious sentiment, never makes this mistake - I read an article in it fairly recently differentiating clearly between the two viewpoints.
Personally - though I am in fear of my life writing this - I do give quite a lot of credence to the intelligent design theory, being of Christian heritage. However I am not a creationist, and I think people who do believe the Genesis account to be literal are frankly quite silly. No offence meant, naturally.
