The history of creationism relates to the history of thought based on the premise that the natural
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
had a beginning, and came into
being supernaturally. The term ''
creationism'' in its broad sense covers a wide range of views and interpretations, and was not in common use before the late 19th century. Throughout
recorded history
Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world his ...
, many people have viewed the universe as a
created entity. Many ancient historical accounts from around the world refer to or imply a
creation
Creation may refer to:
Religion
*''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing
* Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it
* Creationism, the belief tha ...
of the earth and universe. Although specific historical understandings of creationism have used varying degrees of
empirical,
spiritual and/or
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
investigations, they are all based on the view that the universe was created. The
Genesis creation narrative has provided a basic framework for Jewish and Christian
epistemological understandings of how the universe came into
being – through the divine intervention of the
god
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
,
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he poss ...
. Historically, literal interpretations of this narrative were more dominant than
allegorical ones.
From the 18th century on, various views aimed at reconciling the
Abrahamic religions
The Abrahamic religions are a group of religions centered around worship of the God of Abraham. Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch, is extensively mentioned throughout Abrahamic religious scriptures such as the Bible and the Quran.
Jewish tradition ...
and Genesis with
geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
,
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
and other
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
s developed in
Western culture
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
.
At this time, the word
creationism referred to a doctrine of creation of the soul. Those holding that
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
had been created in a separate act, such as
Philip Gosse in 1857, were generally called "advocates of creation", though they were also called "creationists" in private correspondence between
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
and his friends, dating from 1856.
In the 20th century the word "creationism" became associated with the anti-evolution movement of the 1920s and
young Earth creationism
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between approximately 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespre ...
, but this usage was contested by other groups, such as
old Earth creationists and
evolutionary creationists, who hold different concepts of creation, such as the acceptance of the
age of the Earth and biological evolution as understood by the
scientific community
The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many " sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are als ...
.
[ Haarsma 2010, p. 168, "Some Christians, often called 'Young Earth creationists,' reject evolution in order to maintain a semi-literal interpretation of certain biblical passages. Other Christians, called 'progressive creationists,' accept the scientific evidence for some evolution over a long history of the earth, but also insist that God must have performed some miracles during that history to create new life-forms. The theory of Intelligent Design, as it is promoted in North America is a form of progressive creation. Still other Christians, called 'theistic evolutionists' or 'evolutionary creationists,' assert that the scientific theory of evolution and the religious beliefs of Christianity can both be true."]
''
The Genesis Flood
''The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications'' is a 1961 book by young earth creationism, young Earth creationists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris that, according to Ronald Numbers, elevated young Earth creationism ...
'' (1961) became the most successful young earth creationist publication after 1945''.'' From the mid-1960s, creationists in the United States promoted the teaching of "scientific creationism" using "
Flood geology
Flood geology (also creation geology or diluvial geology) is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the global flood described in Genesis 6–8. In the ea ...
" in public school science classes.
After the legal judgment of the case ''
Daniel v. Waters'' (1975) ruled that teaching creationism in public schools contravened the
Establishment Clause
In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text ...
of the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the ...
, the content was stripped of overt biblical references and renamed creation science. When the court case ''
Edwards v. Aguillard'' (1987) ruled that creation science similarly contravened the constitution, all references to "creation" in a draft school textbook were changed to refer to intelligent design, which was presented by creationists as a new scientific theory. The ''
Kitzmiller v. Dover'' (2005) ruling concluded that intelligent design is not science and contravenes the constitutional restriction on teaching religion in public school science classes.
In September 2012,
Bill Nye ("
The Science Guy") expressed his concern that ''creationist views'' threaten
science education
Science education is the teaching and learning of science to school children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process (the scientific method), som ...
and
innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entit ...
s in the United States.
Creation and Modern science
In the 15th and 16th centuries,
discoveries in new lands brought knowledge of the diversity of life. In 1605,
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
emphasized that the works of God in nature teach us how to interpret the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
, and the
Baconian method
The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science, and thus a first formulation of a modern scientific method. The method was put forward in Bacon's book ''Novum Organum'' (1620) ...
introduced the empirical approach which became central to modern science.
Natural theology sought evidence in nature supporting an active role of God, and attempts were made to reconcile new knowledge with the biblical
deluge myth
A flood myth or a deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood, usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primaeval ...
and story of
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark ( he, תיבת נח; Biblical Hebrew: ''Tevat Noaḥ'')The word "ark" in modern English comes from Old English ''aerca'', meaning a chest or box. (See Cresswell 2010, p.22) The Hebrew word for the vessel, ''teva'', occurs twice in ...
.
[ Adapted from Young 1995] The development of modern
geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
in the 18th and 19th centuries found
geological strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum (plural, : strata) is a layer of Rock (geology), rock or sediment characterized by certain Lithology, lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separate ...
and
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
sequences indicating a very ancient Earth. The
diluvial cosmogonies fell victim to their own success, as the spirit of scientific inquiry they had stimulated, gradually led to discoveries that undercut the biblical premises of flood geology and
catastrophism.
From around the start of the 19th century, ideas such as
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biolo ...
's concept of
transmutation of species
Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used ...
had gained supporters in Paris and
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
, mostly amongst anatomists.
The anonymous publication of ''
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'' is an 1844 work of speculative natural history and philosophy by Robert Chambers. Published anonymously in England, it brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive tr ...
'' in 1844 aroused wide public interest with support from
Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...
and
Unitarians, but was strongly criticised by the religious establishment and the scientific community, which called for solidly backed science. In 1859, Charles Darwin's ''
On the Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'' provided that evidence from an authoritative and respected source, and within a decade or so convinced scientists that evolution occurs. This view clashed with that of conservative evangelicals in the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
, but in 1860 their attention turned to the much greater uproar about ''
Essays and Reviews
''Essays and Reviews'', edited by John William Parker, published in March 1860, is a broad-church volume of seven essays on Christianity. The topics covered the biblical research of the German critics, the evidence for Christianity, religious tho ...
'' by
liberal Anglican theologians, which introduced "
higher criticism", a hermeneutic method re-examining the Bible and questioning literal readings. By 1875 most American
naturalists supported ideas of theistic evolution, often involving
special creation of
human beings
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...
.
At this time those holding that species had been separately created were generally called "advocates of creation," but they were occasionally called "creationists" in private correspondence between Charles Darwin and his friends.
The term appears in letters Darwin wrote between 1856 and 1863,
[
* ] and was also used in a response by
Charles Lyell.
By this time, geologists recognised that the Earth was millions of years old. The exact chronology proposed by Darwin was disputed by other geologists, and the leading physicist
William Thomson (later ennobled as Lord Kelvin) produced an analyses of the heat energy and thermal histories of
the Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface ...
and Sun which yielded age estimates that were too short for gradual evolution.
Thomson's colleague
Fleeming Jenkin
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin FRS FRSE LLD (; 25 March 1833 – 12 June 1885) was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telphera ...
wrote an 1867 review of Darwin's ''On the Origin of species'' which opposed evolution on the basis of the shortened time available.
Kelvin's age paradox was not
resolved until it was discovered in the 20th century that the Earth is heated by radioactive decay, that its internal thermal gradient is affected by mantle convection, and that the Sun is heated by nuclear fusion.
Since the 1980s, the
big-bang theory has been the prevailing
cosmological
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
model
A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure.
Models c ...
for the
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
. It was envisioned by a Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor
Georges Lemaître
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( ; ; 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first to t ...
in the 1930s. Lemaître suggested that the evident expansion of the universe, if projected back in time, meant that at some finite time in the past all the mass of the universe was concentrated into a single point, a "primeval atom" where and when the fabric of time and space came into existence. However, in the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist subscribed to a view that the universe is in an eternal
steady state
In systems theory, a system or a process is in a steady state if the variables (called state variables) which define the behavior of the system or the process are unchanging in time. In continuous time, this means that for those properties ''p' ...
. After Lemaître proposed his theory, some scientists complained that its assumption that time had a beginning amounted to a reimportation of religious concepts into physics. When the expression "Big Bang" was coined by
Fred Hoyle
Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on other sci ...
in 1949, he meant it to be slightly pejorative, but the term stuck and gained currency. Lemaître himself concluded that an initial "
creation
Creation may refer to:
Religion
*''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing
* Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it
* Creationism, the belief tha ...
-like" event must have occurred. The Big-Bang is contrary to young-Earth creationism, sensu stricto. But it has been welcomed by other Christian creeds, and it is in line with the
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
concept of creation. Under the
Anthropic principle, by which the properties of the universe is seemingly
fine-tuned for our own existence, some Christians see evidence that a divine creator has purposefully designed the universe.
Pre-scientific era
Early history
David Sedley
David Neil Sedley FBA (born 30 May 1947) is a British philosopher and historian of philosophy. He was the seventh Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.
Early life
Sedley was educated at Trinity College, Oxford where ...
, in his book ''Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity'', traces creationist thought to the
presocratic
Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of thes ...
thinkers
Anaxagoras and
Empedocles
Empedocles (; grc-gre, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; , 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the ...
, in the 5th century BCE. Sedley states that Anaxagoras was recognized by
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
as "the first overt champion of a creative cosmic intelligence". Anaxagoras's theory was that the original state of the world was a roughly even mixture of all opposites, and that it was the effect of the action of ''nous'' (intelligence or mind) that led to the partial separation of such opposites, hot from cold, land from water, rarefied from dense. Anaxagoras also developed the philosophical innovation of
dualism of mind from matter, diverging from the stringent
monism
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
of his predecessor,
Parmenides. Empedocles proposed a system whereby two competing divine forces, Love (harmony and blending) and Strife (separation) had alternating dominion over the universe and the four elements, earth, water, air and fire.
Around 45 BCE,
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
made a
teleological argument
The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world w ...
that anticipated the
watchmaker analogy
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument which states, by way of an analogy, that a design implies a designer, especially intelligent design by an intelligent designer, i.e. a creator deity. The watchmaker analo ...
, in ''De natura deorum'', ii. 34
:When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers? (Gjertsen 1989, p. 199, quoted by Dennett 1995, p. 29)
170 –
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be one ...
,
Stoic
Stoic may refer to:
* An adherent of Stoicism; one whose moral quality is associated with that school of philosophy
* STOIC, a programming language
* ''Stoic'' (film), a 2009 film by Uwe Boll
* ''Stoic'' (mixtape), a 2012 mixtape by rapper T-Pain
* ...
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
wrote against creation beliefs in ''On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body'', 11.14:
:It is precisely this point in which our own opinion and that of Plato and of the other Greeks who follow the right method in natural science differ from the position taken up by Moses. For the latter it seems enough to say that God simply willed the arrangement of matter and it was presently arranged in due order; for he believes everything to be possible with God, even should he wish to make a bull or a horse out of ashes. We, however, do not hold this; we say that certain things are impossible by nature and that God does not even attempt such things at all but that he
icchooses the best out of the possibility of becoming.
In the 5th century,
Saint Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
wrote ''The Literal Meaning of Genesis'' in which he argued that Genesis should be interpreted as God forming the Earth and life from pre-existing matter and allowed for an allegorical interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis. For example: he argues that the six-day structure of creation presented in the book of Genesis represents a logical framework, rather than the passage of time in a physical way. On the other hand, Augustine called for a historical view of the remainder of the history recorded in Genesis, including the creation of
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...
, and the
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
. Apart from his specific views, Augustine recognizes that the interpretation of the creation story is difficult, and remarks that Christians should be willing to change their minds about it as new information comes up. He also warned believers not to rashly interpret things literally that might be allegorical, as it would discredit the faith.
610–632 –
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mo ...
reports receiving the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
by
divine revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.
Background
Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...
. The Qur'an holds many of the core concepts of creationism, including a 6-day creation,
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...
,
Enoch
Enoch () ''Henṓkh''; ar, أَخْنُوخ ', Qur'ān.html"_;"title="ommonly_in_Qur'ān">ommonly_in_Qur'ānic_literature__'_is_a_biblical_figure_and_Patriarchs_(Bible).html" "title="Qur'ānic_literature.html" ;"title="Qur'ān.html" ;"title="o ...
, and
Noah's ark
Noah's Ark ( he, תיבת נח; Biblical Hebrew: ''Tevat Noaḥ'')The word "ark" in modern English comes from Old English ''aerca'', meaning a chest or box. (See Cresswell 2010, p.22) The Hebrew word for the vessel, ''teva'', occurs twice in ...
, but also provides some details absent from
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
, including reference to a fourth
son of Noah who chose not to enter the ark. Through
Islam, creation beliefs and
monotheism
Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxfo ...
replace
paganism among the
Arabs
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
.
Renaissance and protoscience
The
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
starting in the 14th century saw the establishment of
protoscience
__NOTOC__
In the philosophy of science, there are several definitions of protoscience. Its simplest meaning (most closely reflecting its roots of '' proto-'' + ''science'') involves the earliest eras of the history of science, when the scientific m ...
that eventually became modern
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
. This was a period of great
social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations.
Definition
Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or socio ...
.
The
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and ...
introduced lay people reading the Bible in translation and more literal understandings,
and led to a new belief that every biological species had been individually created by God.
Protoscience
The
Baconian method
The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science, and thus a first formulation of a modern scientific method. The method was put forward in Bacon's book ''Novum Organum'' (1620) ...
introduced the empirical
scientific method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific ...
.
Natural theology sought evidence in nature supporting Christianity.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated ...
's idea of
Heliocentrism was proposed in the 16th century and established by
Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He wa ...
,
Johannes Kepler and
Newton. This overturned the Greek
Ptolemaic system
In astronomy, the geocentric model (also known as geocentrism, often exemplified specifically by the Ptolemaic system) is a superseded description of the Universe with Earth at the center. Under most geocentric models, the Sun, Moon, stars, an ...
of
geocentrism
In astronomy, the geocentric model (also known as geocentrism, often exemplified specifically by the Ptolemaic system) is a superseded description of the Universe with Earth at the center. Under most geocentric models, the Sun, Moon, stars, a ...
, which had been adopted as Church dogma with the
fusion of Christianity with Greek Philosophy in the first few centuries CE.
The English naturalist
John Ray (1627–1705) is sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. As well as collecting and classifying plants, he wrote two books entitled ''The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation'' (1691), and ''Miscellaneous Discourses concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World'' (1692), which included essays on ''The Primitive Chaos and Creation of the World'', ''The General Deluge, its Causes and Effects'', and ''The Dissolution of the World and Future Conflagrations''. In ''The Wisdom of God'' he included many of the familiar examples of purposive adaptation and design in nature (the
teleological argument
The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world w ...
), such as the structure of the eye, the hollowness of the bones, the camel's stomach and the hedgehog's armor.
In April 1630,
Descartes wrote three letters to the father
Mersenne
Marin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or ''le Père'' Mersenne; ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for ...
, which exposed for the first time his Creation Doctrine. Descartes affirmed God creates the eternal truths and the material and extended world with a uninterrupted, free and voluntaristic work.
This conception was subsequently developed in the fifth and Sixth Replies to the objections to his ''
meditations
''Meditations'' () is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy.
Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the ''Meditations'' in Koine ...
''.
Descartes was influenced by the
Francisco Suarez
Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''.
Nicknames
In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of ...
's view on primitivism and divine realism, for which the connections between properties of the real world (e.g. 'being a man' and 'being an animal') belong immutably to the
essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
and intellect of
God the Creator from ever and forever, and therefore aren't created by Him.
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...
, in the 18th century, established a system of classification of
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
by similarity. At the time, the system of classification was seen as the plan of organization used by God in his creation. Later, the theory of evolution applied it as groundwork for the idea of
common descent.
Religious arguments
In 1650 the
Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh
The Anglican Archbishop of Armagh is the ecclesiastical head of the Church of Ireland, bearing the title Primate of All Ireland, the metropolitan of the Province of Armagh and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Armagh. ,
James Ussher
James Ussher (or Usher; 4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar and church leader, who today is most famous for his ident ...
, published a monumental history of the world from creation to 70 A.D. He used the recorded genealogies and ages in the
bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
to derive what is commonly known as the
Ussher chronology
The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Old Testament by James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. The chronology is sometimes associated ...
. This calculated a date for
creation
Creation may refer to:
Religion
*''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing
* Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it
* Creationism, the belief tha ...
at 4004 BCE. The date was widely accepted in the English-speaking world.
In 1696,
William Whiston
William Whiston (9 December 166722 August 1752) was an English theologian, historian, natural philosopher, and mathematician, a leading figure in the popularisation of the ideas of Isaac Newton. He is now probably best known for helping to inst ...
published ''
A New Theory of the Earth
''A New Theory of the Earth'' was a book written by William Whiston, in which he presented a description of the divine creation of the Earth and a posited global flood. He also postulated that the earth originated from the atmosphere of a comet ...
'', in which he proposed an account of the creation of the world. He grounded his argument in the following three ''Postulata'':
:1) The obvious or literal sense of scripture is the true and real one, where no evidence can be given to the contrary.
:2) That which is clearly accountable in a natural way, is not, without reason to be ascribed to a miraculous power.
:3) What ancient tradition asserts of the constitution of nature, or of the origin and primitive states of the world, is to be allowed for true, where ‘tis fully agreeable to scripture, reason, and philosophy.
Whiston was the first to propose that the
global flood
A flood myth or a deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood, usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primae ...
was caused by the water in the tail of a
comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
.
The English divine
William Derham
William Derham FRS (26 November 16575 April 1735)Smolenaars, Marja.Derham, William (1657–1735), ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 26 May 2007. was an English clergyman, natural theologian, n ...
(1657–1735) published his ''Artificial Clockmaker'' in 1696 and ''Physico-Theology'' in 1713. These books were
teleological argument
The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world w ...
s for the being and attributes of God, and were used by Paley nearly a century later.
The
Watchmaker analogy
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument which states, by way of an analogy, that a design implies a designer, especially intelligent design by an intelligent designer, i.e. a creator deity. The watchmaker analo ...
was put by
Bernard Nieuwentyt (1730) and referred to several times by Paley. A charge of wholesale
plagiarism from this book was brought against Paley in the
Athenaeum
Athenaeum may refer to:
Books and periodicals
* ''Athenaeum'' (German magazine), a journal of German Romanticism, established 1798
* ''Athenaeum'' (British magazine), a weekly London literary magazine 1828–1921
* ''The Athenaeum'' (Acadia U ...
for 1848, but the famous illustration of the watch was not peculiar to Nieuwentyt, and had been appropriated by many others before Paley.
David Hume (1711–1776), a Scottish naturalist, empiricist, and skeptic, argued for naturalism and against belief in God. He argued that order stems from both design and natural processes, so it is not necessary to infer a designer when one sees order; that the design argument, even if it worked, would not support a robust or even moral God, that the argument begging the question, begged the question of the origin of God, and that design was merely a anthropomorphism, human projection onto the forces of nature.
Scientific era
Modern geology and gap theory
James Hutton is often viewed as the first modern geologist. In 1785 he presented a paper entitled ''Theory of the Earth'' to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Based upon a detailed examination of what we now recognise as the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere he showed that the present forces seen on the earth were sufficient to explain all the phenomena observed. He wrote "The Mosaic history places this beginning of man at no great distance; and there has not been found, in natural history, any document by which a high antiquity can be attributed to the human race. But this is not the case with regard to the inferior species of animals, particularly those which inhabit the ocean and its shorees. We find in natural history monuments which prove that those animals had long existed; and thus we thus preocure a measure for the computation of time extremely remote though far from being precisely ascertained"(p8) Based upon these principles of Uniformitarianism (science), uniformitarianism, he demonstrated that the Earth is much older than had previously been supposed in order to allow enough time for mountains to be erosion, eroded and for sediment to form new rocks at the bottom of the sea, which in turn were raised up to become dry land. The presumption that the world was only 6,000 years old was scientifically abandoned as a result of Hutton's work.
This development of the scientific discipline of geology, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the discovery that the Earth was far older than a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis could account for, led to the development, and popularity, of the ''Gap Theory'' (now known as gap creationism) to accommodate these discoveries. Gap Theory assumes a recent six-day creation, but also that the Earth existed for many ages before this event, ending in cataclysm and a new creation (hence its alternative title 'ruin-restoration theory').
[
]
In the early 19th century, "a heterogeneous group of writers," known as scriptural geologists, arose to oppose these discoveries,
[''The Great Devonian Controversy'', Martin J. S. Rudwick, 1988, , pp. 42-44] and the Gap Theory. Their views were marginalised and ignored by the
scientific community
The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many " sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are als ...
of their time.
[ They "had much the same relationship to 'philosophical' (or scientific) geologists as their indirect descendants, the twentieth-century creationists."][ Paul Wood describes them as "mostly Anglican evangelicals" with "no institutional focus and little sense of commonality."] They generally lacked any background in geology, and had little influence even in church circles.[
From 1830 to 1833, the geologist and clergyman Sir Charles Lyell released a three volume publication called ''Principles of Geology'', which developed Hutton's ideas of uniformitarianism, and in the second volume set out a gradualist variation of creation beliefs in which each species had its "centre of creation" and was designed for the habitat, but would become extinct when the habitat changed. John Herschel supported this gradualist view and wrote to Lyell urging a search for natural laws underlying the "mystery of mysteries" of how species formed.
In 1857, Philip Henry Gosse published ''Omphalos (book), Omphalos: Untying the Geological Knot''. The Omphalos hypothesis argued that the World had been created by God recently, but with the appearance of old age. This was largely ignored, and some considered it blasphemy, blasphemous because it accused the Creator of deceit. Some Young Earth creationism, young Earth creationists would later incorporate parts of his arguments.
]
Pre-Darwinian biology
Erasmus Darwin published his Zoönomia between 1794 and 1796 foreshadowing Lamarck's ideas on evolution, and even suggesting ''"that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality ... possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity."''
Advances in paleontology, led by William Smith (geologist), William Smith, saw the recording of the first fossil records that showed the transmutation of species
Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used ...
. Then, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biolo ...
proposed, in his ''Philosophie Zoologique'' of 1809, a theory of evolution, later known as Lamarckism, by which traits that were "needed" were passed on.
In 1802, William Paley published ''Natural Theology'' in response to naturalists such as Hume, refining the ancient teleological argument
The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world w ...
(or argument from design) to argue for the existence of God. He argued that life was so intricately designed and interconnected as to be analogous to a watch. Just as when one finds a watch, one reasonably infers that it was designed and constructed by an intelligent being, although one has never seen the designer, when one observes the complexity and intricacy of life, one may reasonably infer that it was designed and constructed by God, although one has never seen God.
The official eight ''Bridgewater Treatises'' "On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation" included the Reverend William Buckland's 1836 ''Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology'' setting out the logic of day-age, gap theory, and theistic evolution.
The computing pioneer Charles Babbage then published his unofficial ''Ninth Bridgewater Treatise'' in 1837, putting forward a thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator, making laws (or programs) that then produced species at the appropriate times, rather than continually interfering with ''ad hoc'' miracles each time a new species was required.
By 1836 the anatomist Richard Owen had theories influenced by Johannes Peter Müller that living matter had an "organising energy," a life-force that directed the growth of tissues and also determined the lifespan of the individual and of the species. In the 1850s Owen developed ideas of "archetypes" in the divine mind producing a sequence of species in "ordained continuous becoming" in which new species appeared at birth.
Late in 1844 the anonymous publication of ''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'' is an 1844 work of speculative natural history and philosophy by Robert Chambers. Published anonymously in England, it brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive tr ...
'' popularised the idea of divinely ordered development of everything from stellar evolution to transmutation of species
Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used ...
. It quickly gained fashionable success in court circles and aroused interest in all sections of society. It also aroused religious controversy, and after initially being slow to respond, the scientific establishment attacked the book. It continued to be a best seller to around the end of the century.
Herbert Spencer was a 19th-century English philosopher who developed ideas about the unifying concept of evolution across the natural and social sciences. Spencer is the first to develop a theory of cultural evolution and is considered by some to be the father of Social Darwinism. It is also he and not Darwin who coined the phrase ''survival of the fittest''. Much of the positivist ideas of progress that dominated the social science philosophy of Spencer and subsequent Social Darwinists has been criticized by present-day sociologists, but such ideas continue to be one of the major critiques made by creationists against evolution in general, even though strict biological evolution does not depend on it nor offer any type of endorsement of so-called "Social Darwinism" or its derivative philosophies such as eugenics.
Age of Darwin
The decades following Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
's publication of ''The Origin of Species'', in 1859, saw the overwhelming majority of North American and British naturalists accept some form of evolution, with many liberal and educated churchmen following their example, and thereby rejecting a biblical literalism, biblically literalist interpretation of Genesis. Although Darwin's work rejected "the dogma of separate creations," he invoked creation as the probable source of the first lifeforms ("into which life was first breathed"). This led Asa Gray, who was both religiously orthodox, and Darwin's most prominent American supporter, to suggest that Darwin had accepted "a supernatural beginning of life on earth" and that he should therefore allow a second "special origination" for humanity. Darwin however rejected this view, and used uncompromisingly naturalistic language in place of biblical idiom, starting with ''The Descent of Man'' in 1871.
Darwin's book caused less controversy than he had feared, as the idea of evolution had been widely popularized in Victorian era, Victorian United Kingdom, Britain by the 1844 publication of ''Vestiges of Creation''. However, it posed fundamental questions about the relationship between religion and science. Though ''Origin'' did not explicitly deal with human evolution, the jump was one both supporters and opponents of the theory immediately made, and the idea that man was simply an animal ( common descent) who had evolved a particular set of characteristics — rather than a spiritual being created by God — continued to be one of the most divisive notions of the 19th century. One of the most famous disputes was the Oxford Debate of 1860, in which Thomas Henry Huxley, T.H. Huxley, Darwin's self-appointed "bulldog," debated evolution with Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford. Both sides claimed victory, then the controversy was overshadowed by the even greater theological furore over the publication of ''Essays and Reviews
''Essays and Reviews'', edited by John William Parker, published in March 1860, is a broad-church volume of seven essays on Christianity. The topics covered the biblical research of the German critics, the evidence for Christianity, religious tho ...
'' questioning whether miracles were atheistic, bringing to a head arguments in the Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
between Liberal Christianity, liberal theologians supporting higher criticism, and conservative Evangelicalism, Evangelicals. The essays were described by their opponents as heresy, heretical, and the essayists were called "The Seven Against Christ."
In 1862, the Glasgow, Glaswegian physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) published calculations, based on his presumption of Uniformitarianism (science), uniformitarianism, and that the heat of the Sun was caused by its gravitational shrinkage, that fixed the age of the Earth and the Solar System at between 20 million and 400 million years, i.e. between ~3,000 and ~70,000 times Ussher's value. This came as a blow to Darwin's anticipated timescale, though the idea of an ancient Earth was generally accepted without much controversy. Darwin and Huxley, while not accepting the timing, said it merely implied faster evolution. It would take further advances in geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
and the discovery of radioactivity that showed that the Sun was in fact heated by nuclear fusion that demonstrated the present estimated 4.567 billion years, or ~700,000 times Ussher's value. A way to measure the age of the universe would be discovered by Edwin Hubble in the 1930s, but due to observational constraints, an accurate measurement of the Hubble constant would not be forthcoming until the late 1990s. According to the ESA/Planck (spacecraft), Planck data, released in March 2013, the age of the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years or some ~2,000,000 times Ussher's value.
The Swiss-American paleontologist Louis Agassiz opposed evolution. He believed that there had been a series of catastrophes with divine re-creations, evidence of which could be seen in rock fossils. Though uniformitarianism dominated ideas from the 1840s onwards, Catastrophism remained a major scientific paradigm, paradigm in geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
until replaced by new models that allowed for both cataclysms (such as meteorites, meteor strikes) and gradualist patterns (such as ice ages) to explain observed geologic phenomena.
In 1878, American Presbyterians held the first annual Niagara Bible Conference, founding the Christian fundamentalist movement, which took its name from the "Five Fundamentals" of 1910, and came to be concerned about the implications of evolution for the accuracy of the Bible. But by no means all orthodox Presbyterians were opposed to evolution as a possible method of the Divine procedure. Dr Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary objected in 1874 to the atheism he considered inplied in the naturalistic explanation but both he and Dr B. B. Warfield were open to its possibility/probability within limits, and most churchmen sought to reconcile Darwinism with Christianity.
Darwin died in 1882. In 1915, Elizabeth Cotton, Lady Hope, spread rumors that he had repented and accepted God on his deathbed. Lady Hope's story is almost certainly false, and it is unlikely that she visited Darwin as she claimed.
Early 20th century
In the 1920s, the term ''creationism'' became particularly associated with a fundamentalist Christianity, Christian fundamentalist movement opposed to the idea of human evolution, which succeeded in getting teaching of evolution banned in United States Public school (government funded), public schools. From the mid-1960s young Earth creationism
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between approximately 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespre ...
proposed "scientific creationism" using "Flood geology
Flood geology (also creation geology or diluvial geology) is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the global flood described in Genesis 6–8. In the ea ...
" as support for a literal reading of Genesis.[ After legal judgements that teaching this in public schools contravened constitutional separation of Church and State, it was stripped of biblical references and called creation science, then when this was ruled unacceptable, intelligent design was coined.]
The decades before the start of the 20th century, and the first decades of that century, have been described as the eclipse of Darwinism. Darwin's work had quickly established scientific consensus that evolution occurred, but there was considerable disagreement about the mechanisms involved, and few gave as much significance to natural selection as Darwin himself. Evolution itself was assumed, but the ''mechanism'' of how it happened was in considerable debate, and none had anything near to a consensus. Among these theories were neo-Lamarckism (which merged certain aspects of Lamarck's theory of acquired characteristics with certain aspects of Darwinian evolution), orthogenesis ("straight-line" evolution, which talked about evolution towards a specific goal by forces within the organism), and the discontinuous variation of Mendelism and Hugo De Vries' mutation theory. Some of these alternative theories, in particular neo-Lamarckism and orthogenesis, allowed more easily for an interpretation of the intervention of God, which appealed to many scientists at the time. The term ''Darwinism'' had covered a wide range of ideas, many of which differed from Darwin's views, but it became associated with the minority view of August Weismann who went further than Darwin by rejecting inheritance of acquired characters and attributing all evolution to natural selection, a view also called neo-Darwinism. By the first decades of the 20th century, the debate had become generally one between continuous-variation biometricians and discontinuous-variety Mendelians. In the 1930s and 1940s, though, they were combined with natural selection into the modern synthesis (20th century), modern evolutionary synthesis, which soon became the dominant model in the scientific community. This model has also been called Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.
George McCready Price was important in developing ''flood geology'', and while he had limited influence at a time when all geologists had long accepted an ancient earth, many of his ideas that a young earth could be deduced from science were taken up later. Price was a Seventh-day Adventist Church, Seventh-day Adventist, and followed one of the founders of the church, Ellen G. White, Ellen White, in seeing fossils as evidence of the Great Flood. In 1906, Price published ''Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory'' in which he offered $1000 ''"to any one who will, in the face of the facts here presented, show me how to prove that one kind of fossil is older than another."''
United States
In 1910, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church distilled the principles of Christian fundamentalism into what were known as the "five fundamentals," one of which was the inerrancy of the Bible, Scriptures, including the Genesis account of creation. ''The Fundamentals'' were published as a series of essays. Its authors accepted ancient earth geology, while holding different ideas about how this was reconciled with biblical accounts. The views expressed on evolution were mixed: two short articles were anti evolution, one anonymous and one by the little-known Henry Beach. Their focus was on human evolution, as were attacks made on evolution by Dyson Hague. Major figures were explicitly open to the possibility that God created through a Lamarckian form of evolution: long articles by James Orr (theologian), James Orr and George Frederick Wright expressed this openness, and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield and A H Strong shared this view.
After the First World War (1914–1918), the teaching of creation and evolution in public education grew as a public controversy. By this time, many texts taught the theory of evolution as scientific fact. Many Christians in the US and later Jews and Muslims, expressed concern that in teaching evolution as fact, the State was unconstitutionally infringing on their right to the free exercise of religion, as in their opinion this taught their children that the Bible had been proven false.
For example, the United States Democratic Party, Democratic Party politician William Jennings Bryan "became convinced that the teaching of Evolution as a fact caused the students to lose faith in the Bible, first, in the story of creation, and later in other doctrines, which underlie the Christian religion."
During the First World War, reports of horrors committed by Imperial Germany, Germans, who were citizens of one of the most scientifically advanced countries in the World, led Bryan to state "The same science that manufactured poisonous gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brute ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and the supernatural from the Bible."
A popular book published in 1917 by Stanford University professor and entomologist Vernon Lyman Kellogg, Vernon L. Kellogg entitled ''Headquarters Nights'', drew a direct association between German war ideology and Darwinian description of nature as a struggle. Kellogg was a leading authority on evolution of insects, and had published ''Darwinism Today'' in 1907. His anti-Darwinian and anti-German rhetoric in ''Headquarters Nights'' influenced biologists who tried to play down the negative implications of "survival of the fittest."
Benjamin Kidd's 1918 book ''Science of Power'', claimed that there were historical and philosophical connections between Darwinism and German militarism. This book and others around this time had an effect on many people.
In 1922, William Jennings Bryan published ''In His Image'', in which he argued that Darwinism was both irrational and immoral. On the former point, he pointed to examples such as the eye, which he argued could not be explained by Darwinian evolution. On the latter point, he argued that Darwinism advocated the policy of "scientific breeding" or eugenics, by which the strong were to weed out the weak, a policy that directly contradicts the Christian doctrine of charity to the helpless.
In 1923, fundamentalist preacher and evangelist William Bell Riley, known as "The Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism," founded the Anti-Evolution League of Minnesota, which, in 1924, became the Anti-Evolution League of America. The organization was behind anti-evolution legislation in Kentucky, where its efforts were supported by William Jennings Bryan.
In 1924, Clarence Darrow defended Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb on the charge of kidnapping and killing Bobby Franks; his defense included an argument that "this terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor."
In the 1920s and 1930s, Harry Rimmer was one of the most prominent American creationists. Known as the "noisiest evangelist in America," he published many creationist tracts, debated other creationists and was involved in a famous trial known as the "Floyd-Rimmer trial" against the atheist William Floyd.
In 1925, G. K. Chesterton publishe
''The Everlasting Man''
in which he developed and articulated many creationist ideas and criticisms of the philosophical underpinnings and perceived logical flaws of evolution.
The Scopes Trial of 1925 is perhaps the most famous court case of its kind. The Butler Act had prohibited the teaching of evolution in public education, public schools in Tennessee. Clarence Darrow was the defense counsel, and William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor. Bryan appealed for assistance to George McCready Price, Johns Hopkins University physician Howard A. Kelly, physicist Louis T. More, and Alfred W. McCann, all of whom had written books supporting creationism. Price was away in England, Kelly and More told Bryan they considered themselves more convinced by evolution, and McCann was not interested because of Bryan's stance on prohibition. Nevertheless, a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution and fined, although the case was later dismissed on a technicality.
Following up on the Butler Act, antievolutionary laws were passed in Mississippi in 1926, and then in Arkansas in 1928. However, the 1928 election and the onset of the Great Depression, Depression changed the playing field. Creationists shifted their attention from state legislatures to local school boards, having substantial success. They set themselves to the tasks of "the emasculation of textbooks, the 'purging' of libraries, and above all the, continued hounding of teachers." Discussions of evolution vanished from almost all schoolbooks. By 1941, about one third of American teachers were afraid of being accused of supporting evolution.
In 1929, a book by one of George McCready Price's former students, Harold W. Clark described Price's catastrophism as "creationism" in ''Back to Creationism''. Previously anti-evolutionists had described themselves as being "Christian fundamentalists" "Anti-evolution" or "Anti-false science." The term creationism had previously referred to the creation of souls for each new person, as opposed to traducianism, where souls were said to have been inherited from one's parents.
In 1933, a group of atheists seeking to develop a "new religion" to replace previous, deity-based religions, composed the Humanist Manifesto, which outlined a fifteen-point belief system, the first two points of which provided that "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created" and "Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process." This document exacerbated the ideological tone of the discussion in many circles, as many creationists came to see evolution as a doctrine of the "religion" of atheism.
In 1935, the "Religion and Science Association" was formed by a small group of creationists, led by a Wheaton College professor, to form "a unified front against the theory of evolution."[Christian Faith and Life 42 (1936)] There were three main schools of creationist thought, represented by Price, Rimmer, and tidal expert William Bell Dawson. However, since Dawson was a proponent of day-age creationism and Rimmer was ardently convinced that gap creationism was correct, the staunch supporters of a literal 6 day creation and young earth creationism, 6000-year-old earth were incensed, and the organization fell apart.
Price and his supporters retreated to California, and with several doctors working at the College of Medical Evangelists (now Loma Linda University), formed the "Deluge Geology Society." The "Deluge Geology Society" published the ''Bulletin of Deluge Geology and Related Science'' from 1941 to 1945. They made secret plans to unveil discoveries of fossils of human footprints that were in rock that was purportedly older than accounted for in evolutionary theory. However, again the organization foundered over disagreements about a young earth creationism, 6000 year old earth.
Price was particularly strident in his attacks against fellow creationists. His friend and former student Harold W. Clark had earned a master's degree in biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and felt that Price's book ''New Geology'' was "entirely out of date and inadequate." Unfortunately, Price responded angrily when he found out, accusing Clark of suffering from "the modern mental disease of universityitis" and of falling in with the "tobacco-smoking, Sabbath-breaking. God-defying" evolutionists. Clark pleaded with Price that he still believed in a 6 day creation and a young earth and a universal flood, but Price responded with a vitriolic publication entitled ''Theories of Satanic Origin'' about Clark and his views.
The American George Gaylord Simpson argued that the paleontological record supported evolution in the 1940s. Some creationists, however, objected to his supposed equation of microevolution and macroevolution, acknowledging the former but denying the latter, and continue to do so to this day.
Post-war
United States
The Second World War (1939–1945) saw the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. American creationist explanation for the Holocaust is that it had been driven in part by eugenics, or the principle that individuals with "undesirable" genetic characteristics should be removed from the gene pool. Eugenics was based in part on principles of cultural evolutionary theory, though many biologists had long opposed it. Although eugenics was rejected by other nations after the war, the memory of it did not quickly fade, and professional scientists sought to distance themselves from it and other racial ideologies associated with the Nazis.
Fissures within the creationist community, which had always been present, continued to deepen as fundamentalists received advanced training in the sciences. Geochemist J. Laurence Kulp had gone to the evangelical school Wheaton College (Illinois), Wheaton College for his undergraduate degree and was a Plymouth Brother. He obtained a PhD from Princeton University, Princeton before taking a faculty position at Columbia. He felt it was his duty to warn fellow Christians in the evangelical scientific organization the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) of the problems with Price's claims. Kulp wrote a review of Price's work, in which he stated that "major propositions of the theory are contradicted by established physical and chemical laws" in 1950. This caused substantial consternation among his fellow members of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), an affiliation of Christians who are also scientists, causing many to claim that Kulp had been contaminated with "the orthodox geological viewpoint" and this was responsible for his faith in the Bible being badly shaken. Kulp's influence, however, continues today within the American Scientific Affiliation, which continues to support old earth creationism.
In the 1950s the United States slid into a Cold War with the communism, communist Soviet Union, its former ally. Communism had as one of its principles atheism. Americans divided over the issues of Communism and atheism, but with the Great Purge, Cultural Revolution and 1956 Hungarian Uprising, many became concerned about the implications of Communism and atheism. At the same time, the scientific community was making great strides in developing the theory of evolution, which seemed to make belief in God unreasonable under Occam's razor. The American shock and panic about the 1957 Sputnik 1, Sputnik launch led to the passage of the National Defense Education Act in 1958 to reform American science curricula. This resulted in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, also begun in 1958 and with the goal of writing new up-to-date biology textbooks. These new biology textbooks included a discussion of the theory of evolution. Within a few years, half of American schools were using the new BSCS biology textbooks. In addition, the hundredth anniversary of the publication of ''The Origin of Species'' was in 1959, and this sparked renewed public interest in evolutionary biology. The creationist fervor of the past seemed like ancient history. A historian at Oklahoma's Northeastern State University, R. Halliburton, even made a prediction in 1964 that "a renaissance of the [creationist] movement is most unlikely."
In 1961, Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, Jr published a book entitled ''The Genesis Flood,'' in an effort to provide a scientific basis for young earth creationism and Flood geology
Flood geology (also creation geology or diluvial geology) is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the global flood described in Genesis 6–8. In the ea ...
. Morris had published several books previously, but none had the impact that ''The Genesis Flood'' did. Its publication resulted in ten like-minded creationists forming the Creation Research Society in 1963, and the Institute for Creation Research in 1972.
In 1968, the US Supreme Court ruled in Epperson vs. Arkansas that a 1928 act forbidding the teaching of human evolution violated the Establishment Clause
In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text ...
of the US constitution. This clause lays out the Separation of church and state in the United States and states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise thereof."
In 1970, creationists in California established the Institute for Creation Research, to "meet the need for an organization devoted to research, publication, and teaching in those fields of science particularly relevant to the study of origins."
In 1973, a famous anti-young earth creationist essay by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky was published in the ''American Biology Teacher'' entitled ''Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution''. He argued that evolution was not incompatible with a belief in God nor a belief in the accuracy of scriptures.
In 1975, in Daniel v. Waters, the U.S. Sixth Circuit of Appeals struck down Tennessee's "equal time" law that any biology textbook which discussed human origins must give equal emphasis to the Biblical account.
In 1978 the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy developed the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which denies "that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood."
In 1980, Walt Brown (creationist), Walt Brown became director of the Center for Scientific Creation.
In 1981, the San Diego based fundamentalist group the Creation Science Research Center claimed, in a trial dubbed the "Monkey Trial Replay," that teaching evolution as the sole theory of development violated the rights of children who believed in biblical creation. In his opening statement for the group lawyer Richard Turner argued:
It is not a showdown at high noon between creation and evolution. It is not religion versus science. We are not trying to sneak the Bible into the classroom, or any other religious doctrine. The real issue here is that of religious freedom under the United States Constitution.
Turner went on to explain that the plaintiffs were seeking protection for the belief that "God created man as man, not as a blob." ''The Times'' of 7 March 1981 reported that some were of the opinion that the case was "a signal of things to come, with more and more fundamentalist groups trying to flex their not inconsiderable influence in schools across the country." At the same time Frank D. White, the Governor of Arkansas signed a Bill requiring that creation science and the theory of evolution be given equal weight in schools. Although fifteen states attempted to introduce such Bills around this time, only that in Arkansas made it into law. Following hearings in Little Rock the law was overturned by Judge William Overton (judge), William Overton early in 1982, just as a similar (and equally unsuccessful) Bills were approved by legislators in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Carl Baugh established the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas in 1984. Kent Hovind's Young Earth Creationist ministry was founded in 1989.
In 1986, another creationist organization called "Reasons to Believe" was established. Unlike most current creationist organizations, RTB supports Old Earth creationism.
In 1987, the US Supreme Court again ruled, this time in Edwards v. Aguillard, that requiring the teaching of "creation science" every time evolution was taught illegally advanced a particular religion, although a variety of views on origins could be taught in public schools if shown to have a basis in science. The court gave a clear definition of science, and further ruled that so-called "creation science" was simply creationism wrongly using a contrived dualism to assert that any evidence against evolution would prove Creation. Later that year, drafts of the creation science school textbook ''Of Pandas and People'' were revised to change all references to "creation" to relate to "intelligent design."[Barbara Forrest's testimony]
at Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
In 1989, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics published ''Of Pandas and People'' by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, editor Charles Thaxton, with the definition that "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc."[ The publisher got church groups and Christian radio to campaign for state textbook approval, with a petition in Alabama urging that "Intelligent Design" be presented as an alternative to evolution, and their attorney arguing that it did not compel belief in the supernatural and was not a creationist text. After setbacks it focussed efforts "outside the schools" to prompt grass-roots activity from local school boards, teacher's groups and parents.
In 1990, law professor Phillip E. Johnson set out his argument that the scientific method, ground rules of science as presented at Edwards v. Aguillard unfairly disqualified creationist explanations by excluding the supernatural, and in 1991, he brought out a book entitled ''Darwin on Trial'', challenging the principles of Humanistic naturalism, naturalism and Uniformitarianism (science), uniformitarianism in contemporary philosophy of science, scientific philosophy.
In March 1992, a symposium at Southern Methodist University in Dallas provided the public debut for a small group that included Phillip Johnson, Stephen C. Meyer, William Dembski, and Michael Behe,][Barbara Forrest]
The Wedge at Work
. Talk Reason, Chapter 1 of the book "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics" (MIT Press, 2001). Retrieved 2007-05-28. initiating the wedge strategy that Johnson claims to have worked out by 1991.[Berkeley's Radical]
Touchstone magazine interviews Johnson
The 1993 second edition of the school textbook ''Of Pandas and People'' added a section by Michael Behe making the argument he later called irreducible complexity.
The 1990s saw the rise of intelligent design, which maintains that intelligent intervention was necessary for evolution and in other ways seeks to create doubt about the validity and feasibility of evolution, and to change the scientific method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific ...
so that supernatural explanations are accepted.
In 1994, the court case Peloza v. Capistrano School District was decided against a teacher who claimed that his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion was violated by the school district's requirement to teach evolution.
In 1996, the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, was founded to promote Intelligent design, and entered public discourse with the publication of ''Darwin's Black Box'' by Michael Behe, arguing for evidence of Irreducible complexity. Critics claimed that this was a thinly veiled attempt to promote creationism, particularly in light of Edwards v. Aguillard. The Discovery Institute rejects the term creationism, which it defines narrowly as meaning young earth creationism, though in court intelligent design was found to be creationism.
In October 1999 the Michael Polanyi Center was founded in the science faculty of Baylor University, a Baptist college, to study intelligent design. A year later was disbanded amidst faculty complaints that the center had been established without consulting them, and would cause the school to be associated with pseudoscience.
In December 2001, the United States Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which contained the following statement of policy, called the Santorum Amendment, authored by Johnson:
:"The Conferees recognize that a quality scientific education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society."
In December 2001, Dembski established the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design.
Answers In Creation was established in 2003 to provide answers to young earth creation organizations. They claim that the young earth position is unscientific, and through their website they claim to provide proof against young earth creation science. They are anti-young earth, and promote Christianity by endorsing old earth creationism.
In 2004 Ohio adopted education standards sympathetic to intelligent design promoted by the Discovery Institute. In February 2006 the Ohio Board of Education voted to drop the Discovery Institute's "Critical Analysis of Evolution" intelligent design lesson plan after the 2005 ruling against intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover and revelations that the lesson plan was adopted despite warnings from the Ohio Department of Education, whose experts described it as wrong and misleading.
In May 2005, the Kansas school board held the Kansas evolution hearings. The court-style hearings were promoted by the Discovery Institute and attended by its Fellows and other intelligent design advocates but not by mainstream scientists, who accused it of being a kangaroo court. The result of the hearings was the adoption by the Republican-dominated board of new science standards that relied upon the Discovery Institute's Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan employing the institute's Teach the Controversy approach, despite these having been rejected by the State Board Science Hearing Committee. With the 2006 ouster of the majority of the conservative board members, the Kansas State Board of Education approved a new curriculum that removed any reference to Intelligent Design as part of science in February 2007.
In 2005, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled on the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District that intelligent design was religious in nature, a form of creationism, not scientific and thus violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the ...
. The ruling barred the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classrooms for that district, but the 'Dover trial' as it came to be known, has had far-reaching effects.[s:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District et al.] Around the same time as the Kiztmiller ruling, many state legislators were considering bills promoted by the Discovery Institute supporting the teaching of intelligent design. Most were rejected in the light of the ruling in Dover trial out of what has been called the "Dover-effect."
In September 2012, Bill Nye ("Bill Nye The Science Guy, The Science Guy") warned that Creationism, creationist views threaten science education
Science education is the teaching and learning of science to school children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process (the scientific method), som ...
and innovations in the United States.[Bill Nye video]
See also
* Abiogenesis
* Big Bang
* Geological time scale
* Evolution
* Extraterrestrial life
* Multiverse
* nebular hypothesis, Solar nebular theory
Notes
References
* Bowler, P.J. (1989) ''Evolution: The History of an Idea'', esp. chapter 9, "The Eclipse of Darwinism"
* Darwin, C.R. (1871) ''The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex''
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External links
A simple page examining the origin of the Doctrine of Creation within the Christian church
A brief history of creationism from the Middle Ages to "Creation Science" NCSE
Church of the FSM – Open letter to Kansas School Board
Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy
by Barbara Forrest
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Creationism
Creationism
Intellectual history, Creationism
History of religion, Creationism