Why Are We Here?

Evolution vs. creationism: why are we here?

Graphic by Shannon Zogran

Evolution vs. creationism: why are we here?

Shannon Zogran, Journalist

We answer the question with religion. We answer the question with science. We answer the question with observation. We each have a different answer and a different reason behind it. We use our own answer to guide us through life.

Why are we here?

Two views that support different answers and reach both ends of the spectrum are Creationism and Evolution. Creationism is the belief that all things come from acts of “divine creation.” Evolution is the theory that everything here today has evolved from a more simple being. But some people are able to take these two ideas, and put them together forming a theory that not many consider.

Senior Jessica Hoffelder believes in this combined theory of both creationism and evolution. 

Hoffelder said, “No one said how long God’s days were; evolution could have occurred during those days and could have been thousands or millions of years long.”

Junior Dante Schiavo has a similar theory in which “The Bible” and Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, go hand in hand.

Schiavo said, “I was enrolled in a Franciscan Catholic School for nine years. During my education there, I studied various holy books and the religions that follow them. Most creation stories breakdown to relatively the same idea: A man was made and ‘God’ then took a piece of the man and used it to make a women…similar to an early theory of cell division.”

We may not know exactly how we got to be who we are, we may never know, but one thing that we do know is that we do have a purpose.

“We are here for our own happiness. Everything we do as the human race results in our own personal gain. Even self sacrifice reflects upon us,” said Schiavo. “But as a whole, we do have a general purpose. That purpose is evolution. Our human purpose is to continue on the human race and further develop it.”

While many may think this topic to be too controversial to discuss, how humans got here and what their purpose is on earth is something we continue to wonder and theorize about.

The answer to how we got here may never completely show itself, but we can continue to infer and discover new things that lead us closer to the answer.

The answer to why we are here, what our purpose is, may never be one thing. It can not be one, solid answer. It is multiple things. It is infinite things.

It is to be happy; to love; to be loved; to sing; to dance; to laugh; to cry; to believe; to disbelieve.

It is what you decide.

So, I guess the real question is: what will you choose?