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In modern usage, creationism is the belief that God, has created or substantially contributed to the development of life, the universe, and everything in it. Advocates of this viewpoint, when debating evolutionists, often refer to this belief as creation science. Advocates of "intelligent design" have an alternate formulation of the issue that sidesteps the "faith" issue.

In theology, creationism traditionally is the doctrine that each soul is created individually by God, as opposed to traducianism, which holds that the souls of infants are derived from those of their parents (see also pre-existence).

This historical difference in usage can be explained by the increasing contrast with alternative views which previously did not exist. Europe specifically was dominated by religious views after the decline of the Roman empire, and it was the watershed of scientific discovery and progressive thinking unleashed by the renaissance which made other explanations than purely theological ones conceivable again. The term "creationism" thus developed into an umbrella term for various creation beliefs, and for non-theological justifications thereof.

The arguments presented in support of creationist beliefs contradict each other as would be expected, as there is no single set of beliefs or arguments which identifies creationism. Most importantly, however, some types of creationism are in direct conflict with the findings of fact, especially in the empirical sciences of astronomy, geology, and biology. The view that life gradually, over millions of years, evolved from simple to ever more complex forms by means of mutation and natural selection, commonly referred to as the theory of evolution, is claimed by fundamentalist creationists to have no empirical support, arousing the irritation and contempt of virtually the entire scientific community against creationism.

Creationism vs. evolution

Historically, the "creationism vs. evolution" debate began when Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published their independent observations on evolutionary mechanisms in 1858 and 1859. Darwin's The Origin of Species would soon become the focal point of creationist debate, at a time when universities were still dominated by religious thought. Darwin was well aware of the likely implications of his work for people with strong religious beliefs and withheld its publication until it became inevitable because Wallace held similar views. The debate had fully arrived in the United States in 1925, when the famous Scopes Trial tested a law that forbade the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools.

By now, the modern theory of evolution is widely accepted among scientists, who hold that it accurately explains how complex life can emerge over billions of years from simple self-replicating molecules. Creationism nevertheless remains a particularly controversial topic in the United States, where creationist groups are lobbying for changes to regional school board rules and textbooks in order to give equal time to creationist views in the classroom, or to ban the teaching of evolution altogether.

In recent times, such views have found a more moderate expression in the form of the intelligent design hypothesis, which is less specific in it claims than biblical creationism, but nevertheless holds that a designer must have been involved in the creation of species, and that this possibility should be discussed in schools. Scientific advocates of the theory of evolution not only find the ID claims pseudoscientific, they often charge that these are merely creationism in disguise, and a dishonest attempt to bring religion into the classroom.

Distribution of creationist views

In the United States, creationism remains popular among laypersons. According to several evolution polls over the last decade, 45-50% of Americans believe that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." Only about 10% believe that the evolution of species occurred without any divine intervention. These numbers are higher among the upper class, among Internet users and among college graduates, and much higher among scientists (about 55% believe that evolution occurred without God over millions of years according to a 1997 Gallup poll [1]), and higher still among biologists. This data has remained relatively stable over time.

In 1987, Newsweek said: "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly.'". This suggests that support for this form of creationism as a fraction of scientists working in the area is negligible. A 2000 poll by People for the American Way examined the question of popular support for evolution and creationism in schools, and showed that a large majority of 83% supported the teaching of the theory of evolution [2].

The United States fundamentalist Christian community has no real parallels (in terms of numbers, prominence, and political influence) elsewhere in the Western world, and because most vocal creationists are from the United States, it is generally assumed that creationist views are not as common elsewhere. Statistics in the area are however patchy. According to a PBS documentary on evolution, Australian creationists claimed that "five percent of the Australian population now believe that Earth is thousands, rather than billions, of years old". The documentary further states that "Australia is a particular stronghold of the creationist movement". Taking these claims at face value, "young-earth" creationism is very much a minority position in Western countries other than the USA.

In Europe specifically, creationism is a less well defined phenomenon, and regular polls are not taken; however, the option of teaching creationism in school has not yet been seriously considered in any Western European country. Even in Catholic-majority countries, papal acceptance of evolution as worthy of study has essentially ended debate on the matter for many people. Nevertheless, creationist groups such as the German Studiengemeinschaft Wort und Wissen [3] are actively lobbying there as well. There is a Turkish creationist organization BAV, whose pseudonymous spokesman Harun Yahya puts an Islamic face on familiar American creationism. There apparently are a number of Hindu creationists as well.

Types of creationism

The following types of creationist views exist and are distributed unevenly among various religious groups:

The universe exists by a specific kind of fashioning into existence, a creating work by God, beginning with nothing.
Man was fashioned distinctly by God, unique in the creation.
Progress and differentiation of some kind under the guidance of God has not ceased.
The creating work reached its culmination in the creation of mammals and Man, and has since ceased.
Man was fashioned out of non-living material, and given life by God.
The creation of new and higher types of life out of lower types of life, never happened.
Man was fashioned in a relatively very short time after the initial creation of all things
Creation and man began to exist at approximately the same time.
All created existence began within a single terrestrial week, six to ten thousand years ago.

There is a sharp distinction in particular between "Young Earth" creationists and "Old Earth" creationists who hold contradictory views regarding the age of the Earth, where Young Earth creationism is typically based on Jewish and Christian religious fundamentalism and holds that scienctific findings simply conflict with the account of creation given in Genesis, where it is recorded that the Earth was created by God in six days. This adherence to six actual days comes from a strict belief in biblical inspiration. Young Earth creationists who interpret the Bible literally believe that the Earth is somewhere around 6,000 years old (according to Bishop James Ussher's dating) and usually reject the Big Bang theory of creation.

Old Earth creationism is typically more compatible with evolutionary thought, but may also refer to the view that life was immediately created on a pre-existing old Earth. Some, in an attempt to harmonize mainstream science with biblical literalism, hold that the six days referred to are not ordinary 24-hour days, but rather much longer periods (of thousands or millions of years); the Genesis account is then interpreted as an account of the process of evolution. There are even some Christians who believe the six day period refers to the time spent by light traveling from the center of the universe at the time and point of creation.

Liberal Christians typically hold that the passages in Genesis are not to be interpreted literally, but are rather a symbolic or poetic account of the creation of the universe. Some believe that they are based on the prevailing scientific ideas of the time they were written, and that only the moral and religious, as opposed to the scientific, content of the Bible is inspired.

While some creationists insist that the formation of Man from non-living material was not a process which included mediate steps by way of animal life, others are less dogmatic with regard to the animal ancestry of Man. Some Creationists do not believe that the two accounts of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are compatible, and yet hold that the creation of Man is in some important sense the culmination of God's creating work, although neither account is taken as "history". Other Creationists harmonize the two accounts, as one version with two distinct emphases, historical but with some events arranged in non-chronological order.

See creation beliefs for a more detailed discussion of theological views on creationism within different religious belief systems.

Creationism and naturalism

The following tenets of creationism inherently contradict philosophical naturalism and materialism:

There was an origin of the universe for which the direct intervention of God was required.
The origin of life required the direct intervention of God.
Sentience, perception, self-awareness, and the capacities for knowledge and understanding, are not reducible to physical processes alone, but were granted to living and intelligent creatures by the direct intervention of God.
These capacities, and more basically life itself, are not possible to describe in terms of physics alone.

A general response to the modern creationism controversy has been articulated by Phillip E. Johnson, Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, who argues that the entire issue of biological origins has been framed in terms of naturalism, and that natural science per se is not identical with naturalism. According to him, the statement, "Science has nothing to say about whether or not there exists a supernatural realm" is true and based on the fact that rigorous physical science is naturalistic, but the statement, "Science holds that there is no supernatural realm" is false because it is beyond the scope of natural science to make such an assertion, but is instead a philosophical position. According to Johnson, this distinction opens the possibility of natural science and creationism being non-contradictory. However, such an assertion becomes problematic in light of very specific creationist claims that pertain to the natural realm, and also does not answer the question whether creationism in the form of creation science has a place in public schools.

Arguments against evolution

Many creationists posit what they claim are scientific arguments against the theory of evolution. Evolutionists often respond that these are merely attempts to "mask" creationism as a science, and that so-called creation science is, per definition, a pseudoscience. Nevertheless, biologists have invested considerable time responding to claims by creationists, and have frequently expressed frustration that claims that they consider debunked are tirelessly repeated, which they interpret as evidence that creationists have no interest to engage in a scientific debate (cf. Arthur 1996).

Macroevolution vs. Microevolution

While they hold that so-called microevolution in bacteria and viruses can occur, some Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, such as Henry Morris (Christian) of the Creation Research Institute, have offered what they believe to be proof of the impossibility of macroevolution in larger organisms. They charge that all examples of evolution provided by scientists are solely examples solely of microevolution.

Fossils and macroevolution

Creationists claim that though many varieties of reptiles and mammals exist, there is no record of an animal capable of bridging the gap between them, and that so-called "gaps in the fossil record" reveal "missing links" between different species which refute the idea of gradual transitions.

Scientists respond that missing links are constantly being found and that we have thousands of fossil examples for many species showing transition states from one form to another. Fossil finds are generally restricted only to the extremely small amount of sedimentary rock that is exposed on the surface of the Earth at any one time. The vast majority of actual fossils remain concealed within the rock strata.

One theory about why transitional forms are sometimes missing (although they are also sometimes found) is called punctuated equilibrium. Punctuated equilibrium is the theory that speciation happens in small populations which are cut off, possibly geographically, from others of their species, and which develop independently. Evolution in these small groups is believed to occur relatively quickly, perhaps in only a few thousands of years. Later the isolated population reenters the wider geographical area and supplants its closest relatives. Many scientists support this view, but it is still somewhat controversial.

Scientists also state that each time a missing link is found, creationists then point to this fossil and one that it links to, and ask "But where is the transitition step between these two?" Scientists have uncovered millions of fossils that fit together in a coherent evolutionary tree, with a few exceptions that are as yet incertae sedis. They hold that no amount of evidence will convince someone who has a religious belief that biological evolution simply does not occur.

Scientists also point out that transitions between any two forms of a lifeform are inherently more difficult to find than other fossils. Any missing stages are due to the fast rate of evolutionary leaps when they actually occur, in contrast to the time in between where there is very little change. Indeed, there must always be gaps in the fossil record, no matter how many separate species are discovered, as it is unreasonable to demand that one can dig up a continuous chain of millions of fossils for each and every lifeform. Many transitional forms are missing only because, for whatever geographic reason, they failed to be fossilized.

Considering that fossilization of organisms is actually an incredibly rare and exceptional event rather than the norm, this is a likely explanation. For one thing, the vast majority of fossils involved deposition in an aqueous environment where they are then covered by sediment in a progressive way so that they are not re-exposed to the elements. It is known from direct observation that this is a rare process, especially considering that most organisms become food for other organisms.

Differences in scale

Most biologists consider the difference between microevolution and macroevolution to be relative. Creationists who reject Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection argue that the difference is absolute. They have proposed that microevolution always takes the form of destructive genetic mutations, which happen to confer an advantage to individuals in a specific environment. Because macroevolution requires many constructive genetic changes, they argue that microevolution cannot lead to macroevolution. One example of a destructive mutation that conferred a competitive advantage under a specific situation occurred in Streptococcus pneumoniae, some strains of which are resistant to penicillin. But this resistance requires the bacterium to expend extra resources that the nonresistant bacteria do not, and so it does not compete well with them in the absence of penicillin.

More specifically, the contention of creationists is that the observed and verified process of microevolution does not lead to increasingly complex species. When the processes of natural selection and survival of the fittest take place, they lead to the elimination of certain unuseful genetic traits, decreasing the genetic complexity and diversity of the affected species, creationists say. The creationists claim that if this this claim is valid, proponents of macroevolution accept that increases in genetic complexity are brought about solely through mutation, which would, they claim, require this type of mutation to be relatively common. Creationists claim that although helpful mutations have been observed, mutations that increase genetic complexity have not. This claim does not, however, appear to be bourne out by recent evidence from comparative genomics, since larger-scale genetic rearrangements other than mutation, such as gene duplication and chromosome duplication can lead to increased genetic complexity.

Intelligent design

The above-mentioned intelligent design movement allows for macroevolution but denies the theory of natural selection as a probable mechanism, arguing that God has guided the evolution. One argument against this view is that the possibility of an intelligent designer is real, but substantially more complex than alternative possibilities, such as a modified theory of evolution, or even the possibility of extraterrestrial origin. As such, it should be rejected as flawed because of the tested scientific principle of Ockham's Razor. If God, or an unspecified "designer", guided the process, this raises further questions, such as:

Who or what is God?
What is the evidence for the existence of God?
Which methods did God use to "guide" the process?
What is the evidence for the use of such methods?
Who created God?
What is his/her motivation for guiding an evolutionary process?
Did or does God also do this on other planets, or only on Earth?
Why did they not choose to create a process that does not require further intervention, i.e. did God lack the competency to create a system in which natural selection can operate?

Further arguments

Other arguments proposed by creationists include:

That there are structures in species, such as the woodpecker's hyoid and the eyes of Strepsiptera, that could not have developed gradually. (Luther D. Sunderland. "Miraculous Design in Woodpeckers", Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1976.)
That rock strata have in some places apparently been laid down out of order.
That the existence of strata and fossils suggest that they were laid down catastrophically.
That the speed of light has changed over time, thus changing the speed of radioactive decay.
That radioactive dates may be thought unreliable if they assume that certain isotopes were not present in the rock when formed.
That while a few thousands of years elapsed on earth, millions of years may have elapsed in the wider universe. The passage of time, according to special relativity, varies with gravitational potential as well as motion.

Biologists counter the first argument, for example, by pointing out that many other structures that were once thought unexplainable have since been explained, and that the lack of explanations for some others simply reflects the fact that they haven't been studied as much. There is some recent (and still controversial) evidence that the speed of light might in fact have changed in the very early universe. However, the upper bound on how much the speed of light may have changed is insufficient to have created the effects necessary for the creation science argument.

Creationism in public education

Some modern advocates interpret the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as prohibiting public schools from teaching religious beliefs as facts, arguing that a goverment-funded science curriculum should not consider the possibility that humankind and other living creatures were created by God. This viewpoint has been used to squelch classroom discussion by students who insist that their faith in creationism is relevant to the origins controversy.

In 1987, the Supreme Court of the United States confirmed the ruling that creationism, even when referred to as a science, is a religious doctrine. The relevant cases are Epperson v. Arkansas and Edwards v Aguillard.

Despite the ruling, Boards of Education and local communities continue to stuggle with controversy when scientific creationism is raised as an argument in opposition to the teaching of evolution. For example, supporters of intelligent design, who typically seek to differentiate ID from faith-based creationism, argued in December 2002 for the inclusion of the hypothesis that life had an intelligent desiginer in the Ohio Board of Education standards for science education.

Creationists

External links and references

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 [[de:Kreationismus]][[nl:Creationisme]][[pl:Kreacjonizm]]
-In modern usage, '''creationism''' is the belief that [[God]], or a somewhat vaguely defined "intelligent designer", has created or substantially contributed to the development of [[life]], the [[universe]], and everything in it. Advocates of this viewpoint often refer to their beliefs as "creation science". In [[theology]], creationism traditionally is the doctrine that each [[soul]] is created individually by [[God]], as opposed to [[traducianism]], which holds that the souls of infants are derived from those of their parents (see also [[pre-existence]]).
+In modern usage, '''creationism''' is the belief that [[God]], has created or substantially contributed to the development of [[life]], the [[universe]], and everything in it. Advocates of this viewpoint, when debating evolutionists, often refer to this belief as ''creation science''. Advocates of "[[intelligent design]]" have an alternate formulation of the issue that sidesteps the "faith" issue.
+In [[theology]], creationism traditionally is the doctrine that each [[soul]] is created individually by [[God]], as opposed to [[traducianism]], which holds that the souls of infants are derived from those of their parents (see also [[pre-existence]]).
 This historical difference in usage can be explained by the increasing contrast with alternative views which previously did not exist. Europe specifically was dominated by religious views after the decline of the [[Roman empire]], and it was the watershed of scientific discovery and progressive thinking unleashed by the [[renaissance]] which made other explanations than purely theological ones conceivable again. The term "creationism" thus developed into an umbrella term for various '''[[creation beliefs]]''', and for non-theological justifications thereof.