D’oh. :smack: Sorry, it was Brain Glutton’s link.
Oh, good. I was worried for a moment there I had been typing in a code so secret even I didn’t know it.
I got a bit cross-linked. Hope you’ve forgiven me? 
I don’t know if anyone actually believes these, but I’ve heard a couple fictional ones:
Migratism: Man was on another planet, we screwed up on that planet, came here and due to various circumstances ended up losing all memory of that heritage (including all the tech) over time. This is kinda cheating though as it simply moves the problem ELSEWHERE.
Half-creationism (I think this was in the Exorcist book): When God cast Satan down, he didn’t go to Hell… he exploded (this was the Big Bang), evolution is Satan willfully guiding the pieces of his explosion to reclaim his natural form. Though that is basically guided evolution with another God guiding it.
And one I’m sure has been thought of somewhere, but I mostly made it up:
Self-creation - This requires a big No-No (time travel), basically Joe Schmo scientist from the future plops down a few random males and females, or guides monkeys to evolve in some way essentially acting as a mortal God and periodically going back to check on his work (maybe even using various holy books as reference when he does so to make sure everything is consistent, or something). Eventually, after a long time these humans have birthed the same Joe Schmo scientist who goes back in time and… but this requires a lot of assuming about the time stream.
Essentially it WILL pretty much boil down to “something made us” and “we were derived from something else” (or “We popped into existence” kinda like the Greeks did when the “chaos” became Uranus and Gaea) but you can get pretty creative with it.
Yes, I took his “Creationism” to be YEC, too. My point is that he was looking for alternatives to that and evolution, and what you described does seem to provide a “third way”. Thanks for clarifying.
No, there isn’t another option currently. Yes, there are potentially an infinite number of options.
If you want to do science, then you have to do science. Science is about looking at the physical world and trying to come up with models that predict what you will see if you look at the physical world again. That’s it. You don’t have to use science to decide your moral code or who to worship or whether or not to give a panhandler money. But if you want to build a computer or send a man to the moon, I think it’s probably for the best that you actually look at the data and try and understand what it is.
It’s very possible that tomorrow or in a hundred years or whatever, someone will come up with a model that will be more useful than evolution. But from a scientific perspective, nobody has done it yet. And even if someone comes up with a different model, it still might be that evolution works as a better model under certain circumstances.
It’s easy to make up third ways. They won’t please science people because they’re fictitious and they won’t please religious people because they don’t involve God, but you can make up any number of them.
What about Lamarkianism? Aquired characteristics instead of natural selection.
Or why not posit some sort of life energy that imbues matter with a kind of self organizing energy. This would be goal directed but not divine.
Creation from Nothing. New species simply pop into existence now and then, from some unguessable but non-divine cause.
But the deistic option doesn’t conflict with all. Evolution just describes a mechanism. Atheistic evolution, with no purpose, and theistic evolution, where the game is rigged to produce us, are indistinguishable even in principle. There are plenty of devout people who accept evolution, after all.
Doesn’t the Hindu faith believe that all of existence is a dream of the gods? Hinduism has nearly one billion followers, so that’s hardly a fringe religion.
I find the “Evolution vs. Intelligent Design” debate interesting. We have clear and compelling evidence that Evolution is scientific fact, and we are the descendants of microorganisms which have randomly mutated during the last 4½ billion years, give or take a few weeks. However, we have equally compelling evidence that, at its very foundation, Evolution is merely a process of organisms adapting to environmental stimuli…which suggests that Evolution is not random at all, but specifically shaped and molded by Earth’s ever-changing biosphere.
Now, if you assume that the Earth’s Biosphere itself is intelligent (in the Buddhist sense) then you can draw the conclusion that all living organisms have evolved in accordance with, and directed by, an entity of higher intelligence. So there you have it, both theories are at least partially true.
I get a kick out of presenting this theory to fundamentalist Christians, as “proof” that Intelligence Design actually supports Buddhism, not Christianity, as the One True Faith. 
That reminds me of the God’s Debris thought experiment. Which just seems like a nice version (God is trying to put Himself back together again).
For small values of ‘very’.
How we got here is one of two options, we were put here or we are here by accident. The first is creationism, whether that is God, aliens or time travelling scientists, and the second is abiogenesis plus evolution. A mixture of both is, fundamentally, creationism.
I don’t believe in either one, I wouldn’t say I am agnostic, just rational. The science account is a theory and the Bible account is an allegory. I know that no one present today observed the beginning of the universe or mankind, so no one can offer the truth of what happened. Many times in life the truth is simply “I don’t know.” People should live in as much truth as they do know, and not worry about the things they don’t know. That is my brand of rational living.
One does not need to have seen the beginning of the universe to see evidence that evolution is real. Even within a single human lifetime, there are examples such as the cane toad: the toads which have been most successful in their migration westwards have legs 10% longer and advance 400% faster than their ancestors 70 years ago.
What you are talking about is not the gist of evolution. We all know that what you say happens. When people talk about evolution they generally mean one animal turning into another or the alleged beginning of life. Now all of this may be at least somewhat true, but there is no fossil evidence of one animal becoming another, etc. Evolution is a theory and so is the Big Bang, no one will ever know where the first matter came from and why, or with religious people where God came from. These will remain the great mysteries of our existence.
Those that have faith in God and the Bible have built a religion around it and those who have faith in evolution, Big Bang and science are also building a religion around it. More and more lately I hear about the religion of science.
That is because science has turned its back on truth in the same manner other religious groups have. When I was young a theory was a theory and evidence was evidence, etc.
All of us need to apply the reality principle, and test whether or not we really know something or we just have faith/belief in it. Truth is the only worthy goal of everyone. Religion may make you feel better but the truth will set you free.
Then people are generally wrong. Evolution is not about the beginning of life, it’s about the shifting of already existing life over time. While there may be some debate over macroevolution, microevolution has been repeatedly observed. One could also make the argument that multiple instances of microevolution comprise a single instance of macroevolution, provided there are enough changes to make the original animal different enough from the final product.
The “theory” of evolution isn’t a question of whether it happened or not. We know it happened, we can see it happening now. The “theory” is why it happened.
Might I suggest that it is impossible to argue “science”, “evolution” and “scientific theory” with someone who makes up his own definitions of these words to suit his own preconceived ideas.
When you were young you were ignorant about what the word Theory (as used by scientists) meant and, it seems, you still are. Fortunately for you ignorance is something that can be fixed, start here Gould
How about this: You all only exist in my own feverish imagination. There was no evolution or creation other than the question of where my imagination started and I’m not interested in that topic. When I leave a (chat) room everyone there ceases to exist. So far I find this world amusing.