Creationism (redirected from Christian creationism)

creationism or creation science, belief in the biblical account of the creation of the world as described in Genesis, a characteristic especially of fundamentalist Protestantism (see fundamentalism). Advocates of creationism have campaigned to have it taught in U.S. public schools along with the theory of evolution, which they dispute. In 1981 a federal judge ruled unconstitutional an Arkansas law requiring the teaching of creationism, holding it to be religious in nature; a similar Louisiana law was overturned in 1982. In 1999, supporters of creationism in Kansas succeeded in removing the requirement that evolution be taught as part of the state's high school biology curriculum, but after several supporters of the measure were not reelected to the state school board that decision was reversed in 2001. Fundamentalist Christians have also opposed the teaching of scientific theories concerning the formation of the universe (see cosmology). See also intelligent design.

Bibliography

See E. C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism (2004); M. Ruse, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (2005).

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creationism

The belief that matter, the various forms of life, and the world were created by God out of nothing. Biblical creationists believe that the story told in Genesis of God's six-day creation of the universe and all living things is literally correct. Scientific creationists believe that a creator made all that exists, though they may not hold that the Genesis story is a literal history of that creation. Creationism became the object of renewed interest among conservative religious groups following the wide dissemination of the theory of biological evolution, first systematically propounded by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859). In the early 20th century some U.S. states banned the teaching of evolution, leading to the Scopes Trial. In the late 20th century many creationists advocated a view known as intelligent design, which was essentially a scientifically modern version of the argument from design for the existence of God as set forth in the late 18th century by the Anglican clergyman William Paley.

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creationism - The (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of) exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population - and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong. Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models beloved of management, they are generally ignored.

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Creationism 

an unscientific conception that interprets the diversity of forms of the organic world as a result of their creation by god.

In its extreme form, creationism denies the variation of species and their evolution. Many researchers in the 18th and early 19th centuries were creationists. For example, the Swedish scientist C. Linnaeus thought that all species of plants and animals existed since the “creation of the world” and were created by god independently from each other; the French anatomist and paleontologist G. Cuvier thought that vast catastrophes, or cataclysms, occurred during the history of the earth, after which devastated areas were inhabited by organisms that had survived the catastrophe in remote regions.

A crushing blow was dealt to creationism by C. Darwin, who, by his own studies, demonstrated the variability of species and the continuity between them. Modern creationism is characterized by attempts to “assimilate” the doctrine of evolution, subordinating it to the idea of divine creation. However, even modern Catholicism has to recognize (the encyclical of Pope Pius XII of 1950) the possibility that the human body descended from apelike ancestors, while attributing the act of divine creation only to the “soul” of man. Varieties of a limited creationism, which recognizes evolution only on the species level, are encountered in modern biology. Creationism in any form serves as a weapon in the ideological struggle of religion against scientific biology.