This text is written in Common and is entitled Evolution and creation, written by Terrance Balancehand of Scornubel, dated 1356 DR. The book is a survey of creationist vs evolutionary models of explaining the diversity of various creaturely kinds throughout the known worlds and planes of the multiverse. A key passage reads as follows:
The case of dragons has been used as a major supporting point for both sides of the ongoing creation versus evolution argument.
The creationist argument wonders how evolution can explain the occurrence of dragons on virtually every known plane, and in virtually ever crystal sphere of the universe. The fact that dragons—almost indistinguishable, biologically, from one another—can be found in Realmspace, Greyspace, and other spheres ad infinitum is only explicable if one accepts that some Unitary Principle (i.e., god or association of gods) created them, simultaneously, throughout the universe. The problems with this position are that there is strong fossil evidence in several spheres for an evolutionary process, plus an undeniable evolutionary tree that explains how various dracoforms diverged from one another.
The evolutionary point of view plays heavily on the biological evidence for the kinship of dragons and dracoforms such as wyverns and drakes, and repeatedly touts the fossil record that shows dragon precursors in various locales. Why would a Unitary Principle actively attempt to delude its children by planting such evidence? The problem with this position is that evolutionists are at a loss to explain how dragons that evolved in Realmspace and Greyspace—two significantly different ecosystems—have evolved so convergently that it is impossible by any means (short of asking dragons) to determine their sphere of origin.
And so it is from these contradictory positions that I select dragonkind as the ultimate support for my thesis.
Evolution and creation are not contradictory and mutually exclusive, as most sages would have you believe. The two are intimately and elegantly linked, two sides—as it were—of the same coin. I believe it is impossible to deny that dragons evolved to their present state in the Forgotten Realms. It is also impossible to deny that the same thing occurred in the world of Greyhawk, and in the many other spheres that have been visited by spelljamming vessels. How, then, can this quandary be solved?
The problem lies in the tendency to view creation as a single act in which a Creator says, "Let there be dragons," and there were dragons. Such a kind of special creation seems somewhat arbitrary, and far from subtle (and I will admit that I view subtlety as one of the greatest attributes of divinity in this or any world). How much more elegant for the creator(s) to set up initial conditions whereby the evolution of those very same dragons is inevitable according to the laws of nature, magic and, science? Some readers may be familiar with the game of "pockets," which reputedly was widely played in the ancient land of Mulhorand. The purpose of the game is to strike a single "key" ball with a stick, in a very precise way, so that it contacts other balls on a table, and causes those balls to fall into holes or pockets positioned around the table. When one views the end result of the game all balls but the key safely residing in the pockets—the most simple conclusion to draw about how they ended up there is that someone picked up the balls and placed them in the pockets. (This equates, in my mind, to the special creation theory.) It is certainly a simple way of reaching the end result. But how much more elegant it would be if—instead of placing the balls individually and somewhat arbitrarily in their eventual pocket homes—the same result were reached with a single striking of the key ball? Theoretically, a powerful and precise enough stroke of the key ball would cause all other balls to end up in pockets, creating a complex and artistically pleasing dynamic pattern as they did so.
Once the key ball is struck, all other motions of the balls are according to the laws of motion known to sages and mathematicians. If one did not actually witness the original striking of the key ball, one could come to believe that the eventual outcome was a result of those laws only, and not involving any act of volition at all.
This is how I view the creation versus evolution controversy. The worlds we live in arose from the act of will of a Unitary Principle. But after that initial act of will, all other developments were according to the laws of the world. Dragons—and elves and humans and orcs and the rest—did evolve, but only because the Unitary Principle created the initial conditions so it was inevitable that they evolve.
This explains how dragons—and other species too, of course—could have arisen in so many different places in the universe. The Unitary Principle—through the original, one-time act of creation—so designed the initial conditions in each of those diverse regions that dragons could not avoid evolving.
Creation and evolution are then, it becomes obvious, not contradictory theses, but merely different stages within the process that is the development of the universe.