I believe in a pragmatic combination of creationism and evolution. The only reason why I don't fully believe in evolution is because I don't understand how anything could have formed without a creation. I know, it's against the laws of physics to create matter, but how?
Heh. You've launched a blizzard of responses. Here's my piece, hopefully different from what everyone else is saying.
With regards to matter forming out of nothing: this is a simple observation -- a law. No known process can create something out of nothing. Energy and matter are always conserved, except that either can be converted into the other. By a trivial assumption of science, this law has always been true. (If it weren't true, it would mean we can't use science to deduce the past).
I'd encourage you to abandon the assumption that the world must have had a creation. Yes it sorta comes naturally, and may seem obvious at first, but take my word for it, the universe is not simple or intuitive.
However, modern physics does claim that the world had a beginning. It has been observed that the universe is and has been cooling down and getting less dense (this is confusingly called expansion*). This is basically a law of nature. A fundamental one, since there's no further explanation as to why. This law is true now, and must always have been. BUT: fitting the trend backwards, there must have been a time when it was as hot and as dense as can be**. And before that -- well the trend can't be extended further. So by the simplest explanation, there is no before. Time had a beginning. A "creation" for all matter and energy that exists today.
This image of creation isn't what one might think when one thinks of creating. There wasn't a formless void, and bored Gods, as is common among creation myths. No "vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of night". Instead time itself had a beginning. And after it began, it was hot and dense. And then it cooled and expanded. This is the image science paints. It can be hard to get your head around the idea. But it follows from a very basic assumption: the most fundamental laws of the universe have never changed, and from observation of what those laws are. This assumption should be held on to. Others, like the assumption that there must have been a creation event, are not so fundamental, and can be done without.
*confusingly, because unlike expansion as we normally think of it, the universe was and is not expanding into anything. It was simply getting less dense. It's as if your house got no bigger on the outside, but inside you found an extra closet.
**Not all trends imply a beginning like this, but this one does. It's not linear.
)
