Evolution

Answer (14 - 18 year olds)

Evolution is the term that scientists use to describe how living things become more and more different over time.

We’re not talking about changes during the life of an individual living thing, but about the differences we see emerging over many, many generations. Due to the way in which genes (the code for an individual’s characteristics) are passed on, living things inherit most of their features from their parents, but are also always slightly different from their parents and anything else that has ever lived (variation).

Some small differences (adaptations) are advantageous because they make a creature slightly better suited than others in the population to the environment in which they live. This makes it more likely that that creature will survive and pass on its genes to the next generation. As this adaptation continues to be advantageous to those who carry it, so the feature will spread, becoming more and more common within the population over time. Over many generations, these little changes can add up to bigger changes, making new shapes, sizes, colours and even (eventually) whole new species.

The amazing thing about the process of evolution is that over nearly 4 billion years, those tiny differences have led to enormous diversity of life on earth throughout its history and today. We can see an incredible variety of living things around us from oak trees to ostriches and mushrooms to manta rays, even the duck-billed platypus! We are still discovering new living species every day, and the more we look at the fossil record, the more we discover about the millions of species which have filled this earth throughout its billions of years.

Answer (14 - 18 year olds)

Yes! Just like you are related to your mum, dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunties, uncles, grandmas, grandads, and great-grandparents, you are also related to every other living thing on planet earth!

Nearly 4 billion years ago, life first started on Earth. The first living things were microscopic single-celled organisms, too tiny to see, and quite simple compared to lots of things around now. But because of the clever way that DNA and genes work, every new living thing was a tiny bit different to everything else that had ever lived. So very slowly, through the processes of evolution, these small differences have added up to make big differences like new shapes, sizes, colours and even new types of creature, including humans! There are some living things we are quite closely related to, like chimpanzees: our closest living animal cousins. Others are much more distant relatives, like squid, strawberries or sea cucumbers!

The more we study and explore, the more we discover about the wonderful ways in which the features, abilities and behaviours of each type of living thing have developed through evolution. This can help us find out about our own history, and how today’s cities, societies and civilisations have developed. But it can also help us to learn about the other amazing living things with which we share the planet, what makes us similar, and what makes us different. Lots of animals and plants have features and abilities we can only dream of! Imagine being able to fly or turn sunlight into food!

Every living thing on Earth is different and special and, since we all share the same great-great-great-great-great-(and so on!)-grandparent, we’re all really one big, giant family! For many of us, this makes us want to work even harder to look after the planet and everything living on it. What do you think?

Answer (14 - 18 year olds)

No, it definitely doesn’t mean that!

Lots of people believe in a God who made us. For example, the Bible (the holy book that Christians read) refers to God as the creator and sustainer of the entire universe and everything in it – all of space and time. That includes planet Earth, and all the amazing plants and animals that live here. The Bible also encourages people to explore everything God has made and find out about it, saying that that is part of how we can worship and know him. That’s what scientists do! They explore, research and discover more and more about the physical world around us and how it all came to be the way it is.

Lots of people see science as revealing the processes God uses to create. That means that science can be a very exciting area for people of faith to work in. With science we can discover how wind and water shape the landscape, how elements are forged in the heat of stars, how babies are formed in the womb and how living things change and develop over time through the process of evolution.

We can see religious faith as teaching about who made everything and why, and science as helping us to learn more about how it happened. There are lots of interesting questions to ask, such as why a creator God would use processes which seem to take a very long time. One Christian perspective on this is that the Bible teaches that God is patient and that he delights in all that he is making, so this just helps us to understand more about him.

Answer (14 - 18 year olds)

Throughout history, it seems that all people have been searching for what makes us special or different from the rest of the living world.

The truth is, in many ways, we are not that different to other animals. Whether you consider the evolutionary processes through which we have developed, or the things we are capable of doing, it’s not immediately obvious how we stand out. But one of the important things to remember about the process of evolution is that it’s driven by little tiny changes, leading to big differences over time, which means that all individual living things, and all groups of living things, are different and special in their own way.

It’s fun to see the things that make us similar and different to other animals. We can climb trees, but not as well as monkeys; we can swim, but not as well as sharks; we can sing, but not like birds – and we can’t fly at all (without building a plane first)!

But there are a few things which only humans seem able to do. We have amazing brains and bodies which let us paint pictures, build hospitals, do science, tell stories, control fire, run marathons, believe in God, cook amazing food, ask deep questions, build rockets to fly to the moon, learn all about the things we find interesting and much more. It’s hard to tell quite what other animals are thinking but lots of people think that humans are also the only animals who wonder about the universe around us and seek to find answers to our questions about the meaning of it all.

Another thing that lots of people think is uniquely human is our sense of morality – what is right and wrong. The idea that some things are right, and some are wrong, and the ability to choose which of those to do has been very important in every human society we know about. It’s also worth remembering that we are also the only species of animals who have fought wars, created devastating weapons and been responsible for the extinction of so many other species. This raises some important questions for us about the moral decisions we make.

The Bible (the holy book that Christians read) teaches that humans are particularly special because God has chosen us to have a particularly close relationship with him, and also to care for everything he has made. One of the phrases used to describe this relationship says that we are ‘made in the image of God’. This phrase was used a lot in the ancient world, but usually applied to statues of gods in temples or very powerful kings (like the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt). It meant that wherever that statue or king was present, the god they were an ‘image’ of was represented and should be respected. So for the Bible to say that all people are ‘made in the image of God’ (a God which the Bible claims is the one, all-powerful God who created everything), is a pretty big statement! Not only would this mean that all people are special, but that all people are representatives of God and have responsibility to act as he would to take care of all that he had made.

This means that Christians think it is important to search for meaning in life, and to think carefully about what is right or wrong. The Bible says that knowing God helps people find answers to questions of meaning and morality, and that asking them is part of our special relationship with him. Rather than a book of answers to every question ever, Christians believe that the Bible is designed to help people get to know God and make wise decisions with his help. Whilst Christians would easily admit that they still make bad decisions, and have done so throughout history, they believe that knowing God is the best way to wisely and responsibly use all the special things that make us human

Answer (14 - 18 year olds)

Have you ever seen a drawing with a chimpanzee hunched over on the left, various ape like or cavemen style creatures in the middle becoming gradually more upright, and a human standing tall on the right? Pictures like this can confuse us and make us think that scientists say that humans evolved over time from apes like chimpanzees. However, scientists don’t actually say that we evolved from the monkeys and apes that are around today, but we are part of the same family.

Humans are one of 5 living species of ‘great ape’, the others are orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. These apes, and the other monkeys and apes you might see around today are our distant cousins. Just like you and your cousins share the same grandparents, we share the same great-great-great-great-great-(and so on) grandparents (common ancestors) with today’s monkeys and apes.

Those common ancestors lived a long time ago (our last common ancestor with our closest living cousins – chimpanzees – lived about 7 million years ago), and didn’t look much like us, or like today’s monkeys and apes. Over the years, through the processes of evolution, all kinds of different monkeys, apes and hominins (human-like species), each with different features and abilities, have developed from those same ancestors.

Lots of these species are now extinct, including several different species of hominin such as the Neanderthals which would have been our closest relatives. But you can still see the family resemblance between us and the other living apes and monkeys. If you watch them for a while you’ll quickly notice the similarities and differences between us, in the way they look, act and respond to each other and different situations. You can even find videos of chimpanzees learning to do things like play chess or use sign language to communicate with people. It’s easy to see how we’re part of one big family!

Answer (14 - 18 year olds)

Adam and Eve are the central characters of some of the stories in the Bible (the holy book that Christians read) that talk about God making people.

To think more about their identity, it may be helpful to first explore the question ‘How do we read the Bible’?

The Bible is a collection of books written by many different people over thousands of years. It is full of different types of writing: songs, poems and stories. Christians believe that these were written to help us understand who God is and how much he loves everything and everyone he has made. Some of these stories talk about real, historical events, others are more like poems or metaphors, communicating things that Christians believe are true, but are otherwise hard to understand.

It’s always important to think about the context of each part of the Bible, asking: who wrote it, why, when, what type of writing it is, and for what audience. This can help us to better understand the meaning of what we’re reading. Since the Bible was written a long time ago, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between the different types of writing. But there are lots of clues to help us work this out. Importantly, even when we’re not sure if a section is historical or metaphorical, Christians agree that we should expect the central message of each passage to contain important truth, and remain consistent with the overall message of the Bible. Adam and Eve provide a great example of the challenges of interpreting parts of the Bible.

So what about Adam and Eve?

Most of the stories about Adam and Eve are in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. There are lots of clues which show that the early chapters of Genesis were written to teach about who God is, rather than to teach science or tell us how God made things. For example, these chapters are full of important theological metaphors, used to try to explain the mind-blowing claims about God’s power, authority and love, written in a way which could be understood by the civilisations of the ancient world, and to which people can still relate. For instance, lots of ancient civilisations worshipped the sun and moon as gods. Genesis 1, by contrast, uses a poetic metaphor about creation to make a clear point that there is one God who is so powerful that, by comparison, the sun and moon are ‘lights in the sky’ (the Hebrew word used is the same as for oil lamp) – hardly gods to be worshiped.

Other clues include the names used: in Hebrew, ‘adam’ means ‘human’ or ‘of the earth’ and ‘eve’ means ‘life’. It seems like these words were used as names to highlight important points of the story – that people are made (like everything else on Earth) and created, or ‘given life’, by God. These clues, and others, lead lots of people to think that Adam and Eve might be example characters, used to represent humankind rather than a reference to actual people. Others think they were real people, not necessarily the first ever humans, but perhaps the first humans to be able to choose to have a relationship with God, but that the stories told about them are theological metaphors rather than historical accounts. Still others think they were real and that this story describes the way things actually happened.

The Bible encourages people to explore and discover the world that God made. That includes finding out about the wonderful way in which humans have developed through evolution to become the people we are today. These scientific ideas of how humans developed need not contradict what the Bible says about God creating people – many Christians see them as telling us how he seems to have done it. There are, however, exciting and interesting discussions to have about where and how Adam and Eve fit within the steady development of humanity over time.

Some ideas about who Adam and Eve might have been fit better with science than others. For example, current scientific thought is that the first humans lived in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago, whereas the stories about Adam and Eve’s children and grandchildren seem to be set in the Middle East a few thousand years ago. If both of these things are true, it makes it unlikely that Adam and Eve, if real, were the very first people. However, if they were the first humans to be able to choose a relationship with God, or if they were symbolic characters, which is what many Christians think, then these ideas are completely compatible with what science adds to thinking about the first humans. Our world is full of exciting mysteries to explore, and the more we learn about science, history, theology, and other areas, the more our ideas might grow and change. It’s hard to say whether we will ever have a definite answer to the question of who Adam and Eve were, but that doesn’t mean that discussing this question is unimportant or uninteresting!

Summing up (well done for making it this far!)

There are any number of different ideas about who Adam and Eve were, whether or not they were real people and how much of the stories told about them might be historical or metaphorical. But most Christians agree that, whether historical or metaphorical, the stories about Adam and Eve teach that God loves people very much; that he made us to be in relationship with him and to look after everything else he made; and that we need to take responsibility for our decisions. These themes echo throughout the Bible and ring true regardless of whether or not Adam and Eve were real people.