Evolution
There's a lot of religious confusion nowadays when it comes to Evolution. Opinions clash violently with each other, vying desperately for adherence of hearts through an explanation of the origin and presence of mankind on this earth.
Scientists point to a ladder of mutations along which animals evolve, ascending from the simplest creatures of the past, up into the complex animals of today. This of itself conveys nothing about whether this ascent of the ladder of evolution happens in a supernaturally-guided, or an atheistic, material way.
As scientists who have anything additional to say, often present these mutations as happening by chance, the result is that the very neutral observation of evolution becomes needlessly entangled with a promotion of atheism.
Many religious people then react to this denial of God and scriptural accounts of Creation (such as Genesis), with various means to discredit the neutral idea of evolution, in an endeavour to undermine the atheism that is using it as its springboard in the world.
So some say the world was created a few thousand years ago complete with fake fossil record; others that the fossil record is genuine, but was laid down instantaneously in Noah's flood rather than over millions of years; whilst some, having a more relaxed attitude, say that evolution occurs, but God is guiding those mutations to their destined goal.
By reacting in these various ways to the material reductions of science, religious people are unwittingly affirming the atheists they oppose in the assertion that man is merely a material animal. This is because they are taking references to 'man' in their scriptures as references to the body, form and shape of man, whereas it refers in fact to the immaterial human soul: by so doing, they are confusing the heavenly realm of man with the transient earthly kingdom of the animal body.
References to 'man' in scripture, are referring to the invisible and immortal reality of the soul, not the visible and destructible body of clay: we are a soul, whose association with an animal body elevates that animal body into the category 'human', even where that body is a powerless embryo or in a coma: our animal body is merely a vehicle of the expression and influence of our ethereal soul, in much the same way as your face, words and actions are merely coarse outer signs of your inner feelings and urges.
You are a spiritual power operating an animal body, but are never to be confused with that animal body; when that animal body dies, the spirit and power of your soul is refocussed into greater vistas of existence and experience, much as a blind man opening his eyes would imagine he has been transported from a place of darkness into light, or a bird winging away from its cage and entering the open skies.
The reality of man to the body, is like a driver to a car; the car has its own particular course of evolution: from a cart, to a wagon, to a steam carriage, through to the car of today; whilst the driver has an entirely different course of evolution: through the unravelling of the primordial message of DNA over time.
That is, it is an incidental and irrelevent thing to debate whether our earthly material body was or was not developed through millions of years of change via some means or other, because as the soul that shines through that animal body, you have an entirely unrelated evolutionary path, within the heavenly realms; your progress is determined through the power of God's invisible guidance through apparent and unrevealed means. The salient evolution of the soul, is through the emanation of divine guidance that pours out into the spiritual worlds of the soul in the very same process that brings about the material appearance on the earth of a great Prophet such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad. Each outpouring into the invisible spiritual world of the soul, brings about the sudden evolution of uncountable souls, and is called a Resurrection, and this resurrection causes upon the earth societies to thrive and flourish, through the revolutionising of those souls that are in association with this earth. That is why although a religion may arise in Israel or Arabia, it spreads like wildfire to wherever it is conveyed, and societies flourish and bloom far from the society to which it was originally brought.
Just as the personality of the car in driving on the road is a combination of both the car and the driver, so too, the character of a human in life is a combination of both the body and spirit, and when your days on earth are complete and you pass into the Greater world, your personality will be different, for you will be driving quite a different car.