History of creationism

The creation beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be traced back to the creation stories in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Up until the early 20th century, most Europeans and Americans believed that God had existed and would exist eternally, and that everything else had been created by God as described in the Bible. However, with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, a variety of scientific and philosophical movements challenged the traditional viewpoint.

In the 1860s, the concept of variation and natural selection came to be understood. Gregor Mendel, a Christian monk and creationist, discovered the mechanism by which species may vary within their type, and then adapt to changing circumstances. He did not, however, believe that there was any mechanism by which one species could develop naturally to another. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, although he had never read Mendel's work, proposed in The Origin of Species (1859), that natural selection could account for speciation.

Darwin's book ignited a furious controversy in Victorian Britain. His subsequent book The Descent of Man (1871), in which he applied his theory to humankind and proposed common descent, stoked the controversy further, because of its implication that man was simply an animal who had evolved a particular set of characteristics, rather than a spiritual being created by God. One of the most famous disputes was the Oxford Debate of 1860, in which T.H. Huxley, Darwin's self-appointed "bulldog", debated evolution with "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford. Darwin's theory continued to arouse controversy, but by the 1930s, most Europeans considered it the most reasonable, if not the only reasonable, explanation for the origins of life.

However, the situation in the United States was different. Generally, the advent of evolution divided people into four camps:

  • Atheists, who ascribed to naturalistic evolution, concluded that because the development of life could be explained naturalistically, belief in God was unreasonable, because it violated Occam's Razor.
  • Liberal Christians, who ascribed to naturalistic evolution, concluding that because evolution was essentially proven, the Bible contained factual, though not religious, errors.
  • Agnostics, who asserted that the question of origins was not settled, and required more research to establish the facts conclusively.
  • Creationists, who believed that evolution was scientifically untenable, and merely an attempt to justify atheism, reacted by asserting biblical inerrancy and a biblically literal creation.

Although on the surface, the debate was primarily of a scientific nature, it also tapped into the deep philosophical and religious beliefs of creationists and atheists, and led to a great deal of controversy.

  • Atheists looked back on the horrors of a thousand years of religious wars and inquisition in Europe, saw creationism as an unscientific attempt to force religious dogmatism on people, and saw evolution as a means by which science and reason could replace religious dogmatism.
  • Creationists looked to the horrors of Nazism, Communism, and Nihilism, which were based on certain philosophical implications of evolution, saw evolution as an unscientific attempt to force atheism on people, and saw creation as a means by which faith in God might be preserved.

As a result of these deep feelings on the topic, some elements of both sides have had a tendency to attempt to exclude the other from scientific and educational discourse, and treat the issue as primarily ideological, rather than simply scientific.

The scientific community has come to ascribe almost unanymously to evolution, and Creation science remains a fringe movement among scientists. However, creationism of one form or another remains prevalent among the general population. Political battles over public education are explored more fully in the page, Creation and evolution in public education.

In recent times, a new creationist movement known as intelligent design has begun to make strides in some school districts. However, ID remains a fringe movement in scientific and educational circles.

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