• "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," states Genesis 1:1 from the BibleULTRA.F/Photodisc/Getty Images
  
  According to History World, every culture and society has a theory about how the world and the universe began. Some of these stories involve a supreme creator, whether it is called God or Amen-Re or Gaea. Other theories involve a process called evolution where material substance and living entities gradually evolve into more complex and elevated states. A third choice combines creation and evolution.
  
  

Creationism

• Creationists believe a divine being created the world, its inhabitants and all that is. Creationists are not limited to the Judeo-Christian religion, although that perspective may be the one people are most familiar with. The University of Georgia hosts just one of many lists of creation stories.
  
  

Evolution

• According to NASA, the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in a ball possibly as small as one-tenth of an inch wide. This immensely dense and extraordinarily hot ball began expanding, allowing protons, neutrons and electrons and their opposing particles to form. Scientists theorize that matter annihilated anti-matter, creating light.
  
  As the universe cooled, hydrogen, helium, and lithium formed. A period of expansion ensued, giving rise to immense stars that burned very hot and very quickly. The immense gravity of these primordial suns created the remaining elements. The super novas they created when they died dispersed the elements these first stars created. The galaxies we see today congealed from these clouds of stardust.
  
  Scientists do not all agree as to how life first appeared on Earth but most of them agree that evolution and natural selection account for the varied flora and fauna we see in both the fossil record and in current populations.
  
  

Synthesis

• In "The Science of God," Gerald L. Schroeder explains how creation and evolution can co-exist and be equally true. Schroeder points out many similarities shared by the Genesis account and evolutionary evidence. Schroeder points out that the Law of Relativity states that when gravity or velocity is extremely high, time flows slower. The relative difference in either gravity or velocity makes an opposing difference in the flow of time. The Big Bang theory clearly states that during most of the creative process, the universe expanded at nearly the speed of light. This means that an observer flowing with the events as they happened (at near the speed of light) would experience time at a much faster rate than the billions of years we see from our current perspective.
  
  Schroeder gives a detailed analysis of the creative synthesis showing the correlation of Genesis 1 with the Big Bang. He explains that the first day took seven billion years of non-relativistic time. The second day took four billion years and so on through the sixth day, resulting in approximately 6,000 years documented in the Bible and by science.
  
  Schroeder points out similarities in the evolutionary record and biblical accounts. One such similarity is the fossilized record of the Archaeopteryx, transitional life form from reptile to bird. Leviticus includes a creature knows as the tinshemet that appears in both the reptiles and birds list.