• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.445-455
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• 2021

Interest in the origin of the universe and man has historically been one of the central themes of human inquiry. The question of origin is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity, but a matter of human identity and an important matter of human destiny. The traditional model presented in relation to the origin of man is largely the Christian creationism that all things originated from the Creator, the evolutionary theory that everything happened by chance and evolved from lower to higher animals, and the agnosticism that we cannot know anything about the origin. This study deals with the theory of theistic evolution, a combination of creationism and evolutionism. It is argued that the theory of the evolutionary origin was not an immediate creation, although all things originated from God, but through creation through a long evolutionary process. The theory of theistic evolution was proposed by combining two conflicting theories of origin in a Christian way, which has several essential problems, but this study pointed out two. First, the God of the Bible is reduced to the image of being confined to the laws of nature, not the Almighty Creator. Second, by interpreting the events of the Bible symbolically, it results in rejection of historicity. Therefore, it is more rational to choose either evolutionism or creationism rather than the theory of theistic evolution.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.317-329
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• 2009

By comparing the understandings of theology major with science major in a college, this study investigates how theology major students view the origin of universe and life and how they portray the view of sciences. In addition, this study examines how theology majors change their viewpoints through a series of lectures related to understanding of the modem sciences. Twenty six theology majors and nineteen science education majors participated in the survey investigation. For theology majors, questionnaire data revealed that 42% of theology majors support theistic evolution, while 42% responses with young and old Earth creation and none with evolutionism. On the other hand, most respondents in science education major espoused evolutionism and no one with extreme creationism. Most respondents with creationism shared the insights that science is an instrument for describing the creator's work, whereas most with evolutionisms perceived science as a logical and descriptive system of the natural world. After taking science courses, the theology majors' support of an extreme view like young Earth creationism has decreased by 4% (was 23%), while their support of the theistic evolution increased by a small percentage. This result lends support to the idea that science related courses helps theology major undergraduate students to understand the scientific evolutionism based on their theological backgrounds.