What is creationism

See more words from the same year. Accessed 14 Nov. More Definitions for creationism. See the full definition for creationism in the English Language Learners Dictionary. Nglish: Translation of creationism for Spanish Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures. Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say.

Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution—what good is half an eye?

Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently. Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different.

They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap—a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor.

The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems. Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work.

The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis , the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution.

The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F.

Doolittle of the University of California, San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life. Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences.

Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

Only methodological naturalism can determine how all life came to be. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism—it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms.

Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena.

The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover—their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics. In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down.

How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences? Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points.

They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion—that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain. Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another.

Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas. Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works.

Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

Michael Shermer. Skeptics Society, This well-researched refutation of creationist claims deals in more depth with many of the same scientific arguments raised here, as well as other philosophical problems. Brian J. Alters and Sandra M. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, It, too, uses a question-and-answer format that should be particularly valuable for teachers.

Second edition. National Academy Press, Things started to move again in the late s. It was then that, thanks to Sputnik, the Russians so effectively demonstrated their superiority in rocketry with its implications for the arms race of the Cold War , and America realized with a shudder how ineffective was its science training of its young.

Characteristically, the country did something immediate and effective about this, namely pouring money into the production of new science texts. In this way, with class adoption, the Federal Government could have a strong impact and yet get around the problem that education tends to be under the tight control of individual states. The new biology texts gave full scope to evolution — to Darwinism — and with this the Creationism controversy again flared right up.

Children were learning these dreadful doctrines in schools, and something had to be done Ruse ed. Fortunately for the literalist, help was at hand.

A biblical scholar, John C. Whitcomb, and a hydraulic engineer, Henry M. Following in the tradition of earlier writers, especially those from Seventh-day Adventism, they argued that every bit of the Biblical story of creation given in the early chapters of Genesis is supported fully by the best of modern science. Six days of twenty-four hours, organisms arriving miraculously, humans last, and sometime thereafter a massive world-wide flood that wiped most organisms off the face of the earth — or rather, dumped their carcasses in the mud as the waters receded.

At the same time, Whitcomb and Morris argued that the case for evolution fails dismally. They introduced or revived a number of arguments that have become standard parts of the Creationist repertoire against evolution. Let us look at a number of these arguments, together with the counter-arguments that evolutionists make in response. First, the Creationists argue that at best evolution is only a theory and not a fact, and that theories should never be taken as gospel if one might be permitted a metaphor.

They claim that the very language of evolutionists themselves show that their ideas are on shaky grounds. There is nothing iffy about the Copernican heliocentric theory. It is true. It is a fact. Evolutionists argue that the same is the case with evolution. When talking about the theory of evolution, one is talking about a body of laws. In particular, if one is following the ideas of Charles Darwin, one is arguing that population pressures lead to a struggle for existence, this then entails a natural selection of favored forms, and evolution through shared descent is the end result.

This is a body of general statements about life, since the s given in a formal version using mathematics with deductive inferences between steps. In other words, we have a body of laws, and hence a theory in the first sense just given.

There is no implication here that the theory is iffy, that is in the second sense just given. We are not necessarily talking about something inherently unreliable. Of course, there are going to be additions and revisions, for instance the possibility of much greater hybridization than someone like Darwin realized, but that is another matter Quammen They reply: Those that survive!

Hence, natural selection reduces to the tautology that those that survive are those that survive. Not a real claim of science at all. To which evolutionists respond that this is a sleight of hand, showing ignorance of what is genuinely at stake.

Some of our would-be ancestors lived and had babies and others did not. There was a differential reproduction. This is certainly not a mere truism. It could be that everyone had the same number of children. It could also be that there is no difference overall between the successful and the unsuccessful. This too is denied by natural selection. To say that something is the fitter or fittest is to say that it has certain characteristics what biologists call adaptations that other organisms do not have, and that on average one expects the fitter to succeed.

But there is no guarantee that this must be so or that it will always happen. An earthquake could wipe out everyone, fit and unfit. Before discussing the third argument Creationists level against evolution, it is worth pausing over this second one. Most if not all professional evolutionists argue that sometimes natural selection is not a significant causal factor.

In this sense, it is false that selection is something that by definition is and always is the reason for lasting change. The fittest do not always win.

It cannot be a tautology. Although, at first, this was embraced enthusiastically Dobzhansky , it soon became clear that at the gross physical phenotypic level it is at most minor Coyne, Barton, and Turelli However at the level of the gene genotype , it is still thought very important.

Indeed, it is a powerful tool in discovering the exact dates of key evolutionary events, especially those involving speciation Ayala Moreover, as we shall see in a moment, somewhat paradoxically, as Creationism has evolved! Thus can one explain the diversity of life on earth — it evolved since leaving the Ark, which contained only generic kinds.

For all its supposed faults, there is a better discussion of natural selection at the Creationist museum in Kentucky than in the Field Museum in Chicago, miles north. The bar on macroevolution remains absolute. Third, Creationists point out that modern evolutionary theory asserts that the raw building blocks of evolution, the genetic mutations, are random.

But this means that there are minimal chances of evolution producing something that works as well and efficiently as an organism, with all of the functioning parts in place. A monkey typing letters does so randomly. It could never in a million years in a billion, billion, billion… years type the works of Shakespeare. The Creationists say that same is true of evolution and organisms, given the randomness of mutation.

To which evolutionists reply that this may all be well and true of the monkey, but in the case of evolution things are rather different. If a mutation works, then it is kept and then built upon, until the next good mutation comes along. This shrinks considerably the odds of evolution producing organisms, even though the appearance of mutation is random. Suppose you take just one phrase from Shakespeare.

Twenty-six the number of letters, more if you include capitals and gaps and punctuation to the power of the number of spaces. Dawkins has a good discussion of these issues.

Rather is meant that mutations do not occur according to need. Suppose a new disease appears. Evolutionary theory does not guarantee that a new, life-protecting mutation will occur to order.

Fourth in the litany of Creationist complaints, there is a perennial favourite based on paleontology. Creationists agree that the fossil record is sequential, fish to primates moving upwards, but argue that this is the result of the sorting effect of the Flood. Primates are above dinosaurs, for example, because primates are more agile and moved further up the mountain before being caught and drowning.

They also argue, however, that the fossil record ought to be continuous if evolution occurred, but in real life there are many gaps between different form — jumps from one kind of organism to another. Apes to humans would be a case in point. This spells Creation not evolution.

To which the response comes that on the one hand one expects such gaps. Fossilization is an uncommon occurrence — most dead bodies get eaten straight away or just rot — and the wonder is that we have what we do have. On the other hand argue evolutionists, the record is not that gappy.

There are lots of good sequences — lines of fossils with little difference between adjacent forms, from the amphibians to the mammals for example, or in more detail the evolution of the horse from Eohippus on five toes to the modern horse on one toe. Moreover, in refutation of Creationism, we do not find fossils out of order as you might expect after a flood.

For all that Creationists sometimes claim otherwise, humans are never found down with the dinosaurs. Those brutes of old expired long before we appeared on the scene and the fossil record confirms this.

Fifth, Creationists argue that physics disproves evolution. The second law of thermodynamics claims that things always run down — entropy increases, to use the technical language. Energy gets used and converted eventually into heat, and cannot be of further service.

But organisms clearly keep going and seem to defy the law. This would be impossible simply given evolution. The second law rules out the blind evolution meaning change without direct divine guidance of organisms from the initial simple blobs up to the complex higher organisms like humans. There must therefore have been a non-natural, miraculous intervention to produce functioning life. To which argument the response of evolutionists is that the second law does indeed say that things are running down, but it does not deny that isolated pockets of the universe might reverse the trend for a short while by using energy from elsewhere.

And this is what happens on planet Earth. We use the energy from the sun to keep evolving for a while. Eventually the sun will go out and life will become extinct. The second law will win eventually, but not just yet.

Sixth, and let us make this the final Creationist objection, it is said that humans simply cannot be explained by blind law that is, unguided law , especially not by blind evolutionary laws. They must have been created. To which the response is that it is mere arbitrary supposition to believe that humans are that exceptional. In fact, today the fossil record for humans is strong — we evolved over the past four million years from small creatures of half our height, who had small brains and who walked upright but not as well as we.

There is lots of fossil proof of these beings known as Australopithecus afarensis. Perhaps it is true that we humans are special, in that as Christians claim we uniquely have immortal souls, but this is a religious claim. It is not a claim of science, and hence evolution should not be faulted for not explaining souls. There is of course a lot more to be found out about human evolution, but this is the nature of science.

No branch of science has all of the answers. The real question is whether the branch of science keeps the answers coming in, and evolutionists claim that this is certainly true of their branch of science. Before moving on historically, it is worthwhile to stop for a moment and consider aspects of Creationism, in what one might term the cultural context. First, as a populist movement, driven as much by social factors — a sense of alienation from the modern world — one would expect to find that cultural changes in society would be reflected in Creationist beliefs.

This is indeed so. Take, above all, the question of racial issues and relationships. In the middle of the nineteenth century in the South, biblical literalism was very popular because it was thought to justify slavery Noll Even though one can read the Christian message as being strongly against slavery — the Sermon on the Mount hardly recommends making people into the property of others — the Bible elsewhere seems to endorse slavery.

Remember, when the escaped slave came to Saint Paul, the apostle told him to return to his master and to obey him. Remnants of this kind of thinking persisted in Creationist circles well into the twentieth century. Price, for instance, was quite convinced that blacks are degenerate whites. By the time of Genesis Flood , however, the civil rights movement was in full flower, and Whitcomb and Morris trod very carefully. They explained in detail that the Bible gives no justification for treating blacks as inferior.

The story of the son and grandson of Noah being banished to a dark-skinned future was not part of their reading of the Holy Scriptures. Literalism may be the unvarnished word of God, but literalism is as open to interpretation as scholarly readings of Plato or Aristotle.

Second, as noted above, both for internal and external reasons, Creationists realized that they needed to tread carefully in outright opposition to evolution of all kinds. We find in fact then that although Creationists were and are adamantly opposed to unified common descent and to the idea of natural change being adequate for all the forms we see today, from early on they were accepting huge amounts of what can only truly be called evolution!

This said, Creationists were convinced that this change occurs much more rapidly than most conventional evolutionists would allow. Macroevolution is what makes reptiles reptiles, and mammals mammals. This cannot be a natural process but required miracles during the days of Creation. Third, and perhaps most significant of all, never think that Creationism is purely an epistemological matter — a matter of facts and their understanding.

Moral claims have always been absolutely fundamental. Nearly all Creationists in the Christian camp are what is known theologically as premillennialists, believing that Jesus will come soon and reign over the world before the Last Judgement.

They are opposed to postmillennialists who think that Jesus will come later, and amillennialists who are inclined to think that perhaps we are already living in a Jesus-dominated era.

Postmillennialists put a premium on our getting things ready for Jesus — hence, we should engage in social action and the like. Premillennialists think there is nothing we ourselves can do to better the world, so we had best get ourselves and others in a state ready for Jesus. This means individual behavior and conversion of others. For premillennialists therefore, and this includes almost all Creationists, the great moral drives are to things like family sanctity which today encompasses anti-abortion , sexual orthodoxy especially anti-homosexuality , biblically sanctioned punishments very pro-capital punishment , strong support for Israel because of claims in Revelation about the Jews returning to Israel before End Times , and so forth.

It is absolutely vital to see how this moral agenda is an integral part of American Creationism, as much as Floods and Arks. Ruse discusses these matters in much detail. Genesis Flood enjoyed massive popularity among the faithful, and led to a thriving Creation Science Movement, where Morris particularly and his coworkers and believers — notably Duane T.

Particularly effective was their challenging of evolutionists to debate, where they would employ every rhetorical trick in the book, reducing the scientists to fury and impotence, with bold statements provocatively made most often by Gish about the supposed nature of the universe Gilkey ; Ruse ed.

This all culminated eventually in a court case in Arkansas. By the end of the s, Creationists were passing around draft bills, intended for state legislatures, that would allow — insist on — the teaching of Creationism in state-supported public schools. In the biology classes of such schools, that is. By this time it was realized that, thanks to Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment to the Constitution that which prohibits the establishment of state religion , it was not possible to exclude the teaching of evolution from such schools.

The trick was to get Creationism — something that prima facie rides straight through the separation of church and state — into such schools. The idea of Creation Science is to do this. The claim is that, although the science parallels Genesis, as a matter of scientific fact, it stands alone as good science. In , these drafts found a taker in Arkansas, where such a bill was passed and signed into law — as it happens, by a legislature and governor that thought little of what they were doing until the consequences were drawn to their attention.

William Clinton was governor from to , and again from to his winning of the presidency, in The law was passed during the interregnum. The theologian Langdon Gilkey, the geneticist Francisco Ayala, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, and as the philosophical representative Michael Ruse appeared as expert witnesses, arguing that Creationism has no place in state supported biology classes.

Hardly surprisingly, evolution won. The judge ruled firmly that Creation Science is not science, it is religion, and as such has no place in public classrooms. In this whole matter was decided decisively in the same way, by the Supreme Court, in a similar case involving Louisiana.

See Ruse ed. Of course, in real life nothing is ever that simple, and Arkansas was certainly not the end of matters. One of the key issues in the trial was less theological or scientific, but philosophical. Paradoxically, the ACLU had significant doubts about using a philosophical witness and only decided at the last minute to bring Michael Ruse to the stand. The Creationists had started to refer to the ideas of the eminent, Austrian-born, British-residing philosopher Karl Popper As is well known, Popper claimed that for something to be genuinely scientific it has to be falsifiable.

By this, Popper meant that genuine science puts itself up to check against the real world. If the predictions of the science hold true, then it lives to fight another day. If the predictions fail, then the science must be rejected — or at least revised. The Creationists seized on this and argued that they had the best authority to reject evolution, or at least to judge it no more of a science than Creationism.

To his credit, Popper revised his thinking on Darwinian evolutionary theory and grew to see and admit that it was a genuine scientific theory; see Popper Part of the testimony in Arkansas was designed to refute this argument, and it was shown that in fact evolution does indeed make falsifiable claims. As we have already seen, natural selection is no tautology.

If one could show that organisms did not exhibit differential reproduction — to take the example given above, that all proto-humans had the same number of offspring — then selection theory would certainly be false. The Scopes Trial was a formative moment for modern creationism. As compared with the ex nihilo creationism of orthodox theology, this theory is as light is to darkness.

This metaphysical creationism had now to face physical evolutionism. A literal belief in the biblical account of Creation as it appears in the Book of Genesis. Creationists believe that the creation of the world and all its creatures took place in six calendar days; they therefore deny the theory of evolution.