Evolution or creation why cant it be both?

The "both" option is actually pretty popular: divine creation followed by evolution. There are no solid reason it could not have happened, or that the otherwise inexplicable transitions in evolution (particularly the appearance of eukaryotes) were not divinely driven.

What we have here is a clash of religions. Creation based ideas very often assume a creator god (which is not strictly necessary) while "no creation anytime ever" views are generally a doctrine of the Rationalist religion. I don't find either argument compelling because neither has anything solid to go on. I am also unimpressed with Stephen Hawking's thoughts on the subject; he is very sloppy at actual technical analysis.

I have had lots of thumbs down here for expressing my observation that what we do know for sure points to serious problems with the causal relationships within evolution. I am comfortable with evolution in the large sense but the mechanism is wacky. In particular, it is logically likely (given what we know about DNA) that genes are the result of some life process that uses the genes. That is anathema to rationalism, which relies on effect following cause, but the mathematics prohibit the random production of any gene, anywhere and ever in the known universe.

There are also secular forms of creation. In philosophy, solipsism holds that the world is created moment by moment in essentially the same way a dream is. We know dreams exist; we do not have a real-time test we can apply to differentiate between dreams and what we consider waking reality.

Your restated question is actually different - I would be insane not to believe in the God that is captain of my soul; I accept (based on extensive personal experience) the God that affects the personal world around me; and I have no way of evaluating the role of God as a creator.

Altogether, two of the origin myths I reject flatly are the literal detail by detail story of creation in the Bible and the Rationalist version. The first is extremely improbable and the second is impossible. Whatever happened we would be very rash to say we understand it.

I see the world in a different way. Everything's made up of atoms. The Earth, other planets, asteroids, the Sun etc. are only balls of atoms in nothingness. When I look at the world I see it as different chemical connections between groups of atoms, which the light from the Sun gives shape. It's kind of like watching the world in Matrix, but not quite. Just replace the numbers with small balls. The existence of God would not explain anything to me. The current theory in physics is that this universe is not the only one, but only one of many and that the big bang could have been caused by a collision of two universes. Science, unlike religion, can see beyond what we can really see. That's why it has much more credibility. Human's came up with religion and it was useful for some time, but to a 21st century intelligentsia I cannot see it as beneficial.

Hello, I appreciate your open mindedness in the way you asked the question.

I thing the definition of God that says he is everything is flawed because defining something as everything is actually defining it as nothing. It is actually not a definition if you think about it. I could make up anything and define it as everything, understand?

I will also point out that the theory of evolution is whole and complete without the involvement of a supernatural being or anything of that kind. Our best understanding of something is the one that involves the least assumptions. Adding God to the theory of evolution adds many assumptions and questions. I seems to me that this is hard for theisitc individuals to see this because they are unable to approach the topic from the perspective where God does not exist.

You're simply rehashing the intelligent design argument. It's thinly veiled creationism, not science.

If you say a god directed the processes of evolution, then which god? Zeus? Thor? Osiris? Yahweh? FSM?

Because Evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence while creationism is unsupported by any real evidence.

It would be like accepting the existence of the tooth fairy, just to be fair to their followers.

Stephen Hawking says there is no need for a God because of quantum mechanics, but I ask who created quantum mechanics, the answer quantum mechanics always was, is no better than God always was.

So I like to think there is a God and he created everything starting with the laws of physics.