Creationism

Broadly speaking, creationism is the belief that the universe was created in its current form by an all-powerful [Page 264]God. In a narrower sense, it refers to the taking of creation narratives as true guides to the history of the emergence of life on earth. As such, it is at variance with the evolutionary theory of Darwinism, which argues that species evolved over long periods of time through the mechanism of natural selection and that divergent groups of plants and animals arose from the same ancestors.

Beyond a shared conviction that evolutionism threatens the underpinnings of society by challenging the cardinal doctrine that man was made in the image of God, creationists agree on precious little. Since the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, three competing schools have emerged. “Young-earth creationists” assert that the earth is about 6,000 years old and maintain that radical geological changes occurred because of the Noachian flood. “Old-earth creationists” also reject evolution but argue that the “days” of creation actually refer to long epochs of time and that the earth might therefore be as old as the scientists say it is (4.5 billion years old). Yet another group promotes the theory of “intelligent design,” claiming that some biological systems are “irreducibly complex” and are therefore best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Until the 1990s, creationist ideas seemed confined to North America, an offshoot of conservative Protestant movements based in the United States. The first legal battle over evolution and creation (the famous “Scopes Monkey trial”) took place in Tennessee in 1925. The concept of “creation science,” which aimed to grant evolution and creation equal scientific standing, was born during the 1960s in the works of two Californian advocates of flood geology: Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. The “intelligent design” movement, though inspired by British 18th-century natural theology, was born in a Seattle-based think tank at the end of the 1980s.

The first decade of the 21st century, however, witnessed the spreading of antievolutionism throughout the world and from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, and even Hinduism. Despite the efforts of national academies of science in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, it has now become a global phenomenon, indifferent to geographical or theological barriers.

Other than a profound distrust of the explanatory power of science, this phenomenon betrays a general insecurity about the moral health of nations. For most creationists, the rejection of evolution is indeed an entrance point to talk about other things, such as the role of government, the financing of public schools, or the values that children should be taught. This political dimension of the conflict ensures that the creation–evolution controversy will endure long into the next half century.