The Creation Story and Evolution

Abstract

Western culture has two origin stories, the poetic first chapter of Genesis and the scientific evolutionary record. The stories have similar structural features, leading to the question: Does the series of events portrayed in the Creation Story resemble the series of events postulated by the evolutionary sciences? To answer this question, the Creation Story is treated as poetry defined as a confluence of visualization and allusion, and compared to the evolutionary record. Although a resemblance cannot be proven, this approach suggests that images and allusions portrayed in the Creation Story resemble phenomenal features of the evolutionary record.