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This is a list of Catholic creationist organisations.
| Part of a series on | ||||
| Creationism | ||||
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| History | ||||
| Types | ||||
| Biblical cosmology | ||||
| Creation science | ||||
| Rejection of evolution by religious groups | ||||
| Religious views | ||||
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This is a list of Catholic creationist organisations.
Cercle d'Étude Scientifique et Historique (CESHE), was founded in 1971 in Belgium to preserve and disseminate the work of French scholar Fernand Crombette, [1] whose works include 38 volumes and two atlases that deal with geography, the Flood, astronomy and the pre-history of Mediterranean peoples. In 2008, an English-language affiliate was established in North America.[ citation needed ]
The Daylight Origins Society is a recent Earth creationist organisation based in the United Kingdom with ties to both the Traditionalist Catholic movement and conservative vernacular Catholics. The stated aims of the Society are "to inform Catholics and others of the scientific evidence supporting special creation as opposed to evolution, and that the true discoveries of Science are in conformity with Catholic doctrines." [2] [3] According to the British Centre for Science Education, which maintains a list of anti-evolution groups, the Daylight Origins Society, "doesn't appear to cooperate at all with mainstream creationist groups which are all basically Protestant, calvinistic and evangelical," and that "as far as [they] can make out, it is not very active." [4] The Daylight Origins Society was founded in 1977 by John G. Campbell as the Counter Evolution Group. His origins science magazine was relaunched in 1991 under its present name, [2] as a branch of CESHE. [5] The current secretary of the Society is Anthony Nevard, a retired school teacher living in Hertfordshire. [6] Polish academic and Member of the European Parliament Maciej Giertych is an honorary member of the Society.[ citation needed ] The Society have a website and issues a quarterly Catholic creationist journal titled Daylight, published beginning in 1977 by Campbell, and after 1991, published and edited by Nevard. [7] Its writers have included Giertych [6] and it has reprinted works by historical Christian authors, including G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. [2] In 2010 they launched a techni-colour cover edition of Daylight, and the magazine is still in print today (2015).
The Kolbe Center is a Catholic organisation based in Mount Jackson, Virginia, in the United States. The Kolbe Center was founded on December 8, 2000.
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. In its broadest sense, creationism includes a continuum of religious views, which vary in their acceptance or rejection of scientific explanations such as evolution that describe the origin and development of natural phenomena.
Creation science or scientific creationism is a pseudoscientific form of Young Earth creationism which claims to offer scientific arguments for certain literalist and inerrantist interpretations of the Bible. It is often presented without overt faith-based language, but instead relies on reinterpreting scientific results to argue that various myths in the Book of Genesis and other select biblical passages are scientifically valid. The most commonly advanced ideas of creation science include special creation based on the Genesis creation narrative and flood geology based on the Genesis flood narrative. Creationists also claim they can disprove or reexplain a variety of scientific facts, theories and paradigms of geology, cosmology, biological evolution, archaeology, history, and linguistics using creation science. Creation science was foundational to intelligent design.
Theistic evolution, alternatively called evolutionary creationism, is a view that God acts and creates through laws of nature. Here, God is taken as the primary cause while natural causes are secondary, positing that the concept of God and religious beliefs are compatible with the findings of modern science, including evolution. Theistic evolution is not in itself a scientific theory, but includes a range of views about how science relates to religious beliefs and the extent to which God intervenes. It rejects the strict creationist doctrines of special creation, but can include beliefs such as creation of the human soul. Modern theistic evolution accepts the general scientific consensus on the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, the Big Bang, the origin of the Solar System, the origin of life, and evolution.
John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells is an American theologian and advocate of the pseudoscientific argument of intelligent design. Wells joined the Unification Church in 1974, and subsequently wrote that the teachings of its founder Sun Myung Moon, his own studies at the Unification Theological Seminary and his prayers convinced him to devote his life to "destroying Darwinism." The term Darwinism is often used by intelligent design proponents and other creationists to refer to the scientific consensus on evolution. He gained a PhD in religious studies at Yale University in 1986, then became Director of the Unification Church's inter-religious outreach organization in New York City. In 1989, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in molecular and cellular biology in 1994. He became a member of several scientific associations and has published in academic journals.
Maciej Marian Giertych is a Polish dendrologist and social conservative politician of the League of Polish Families (LPR). He favours state intervention in the economy. He was a member of the Sejm and a Polish member of the European Parliament. He was a candidate in the 2005 Polish presidential elections, but withdrew from the race because of low vote results. He is a notable creationist and has stated that he opposes the theory of evolution as a scientist, a geneticist, and not on religious grounds.
Recurring cultural, political, and theological rejection of evolution by religious groups exists regarding the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life. In accordance with creationism, species were once widely believed to be fixed products of divine creation, but since the mid-19th century, evolution by natural selection has been established by the scientific community as an empirical scientific fact.
The history of creationism relates to the history of thought based on the premise that the natural 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, many people have viewed the universe as a created entity. Many ancient historical accounts from around the world refer to or imply a creation of the earth and universe. Although specific historical understandings of creationism have used varying degrees of empirical, spiritual and/or philosophical 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, Yahweh. Historically, literal interpretations of this narrative were more dominant than allegorical ones.
The status of creation and evolution in public education has been the subject of substantial debate and conflict in legal, political, and religious circles. Globally, there are a wide variety of views on the topic. Most western countries have legislation that mandates only evolutionary biology is to be taught in the appropriate scientific syllabuses.
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a creationist apologetics institute in Dallas, Texas, that specializes in media promotion of pseudoscientific creation science and interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a historical event. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as religious and moral truths, and espouses a Young Earth creationist worldview. It rejects evolutionary biology, which it views as a corrupting moral and social influence and threat to religious belief. The ICR was formed by Henry M. Morris in 1972 following an organizational split with the Creation Science Research Center (CSRC).
The Catholic Church holds no official position on the theory of creation or evolution, leaving the specifics of either theistic evolution or literal creationism to the individual within certain parameters established by the Church. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, any believer may accept either literal or special creation within the period of an actual six-day, twenty-four-hour period, or they may accept the belief that the earth evolved over time under the guidance of God. Catholicism holds that God initiated and continued the process of his creation, that Adam and Eve were real people, and that all humans, whether specially created or evolved, have and have always had specially created souls for each individual.
Christian Order is a British-based monthly magazine for Traditionalist Catholics which was described by John Beaumont of Fidelity magazine in 1996 as "most influential of the conservative Catholic journals in the United Kingdom".
Walter T. Brown is a young Earth creationist, who is the director of his own ministry called the Center for Scientific Creation. The Skeptic's Dictionary considers him to be one of the leaders of the creation science movement. He proposes a specific version of flood geology called the Hydroplate Theory. He is a retired army officer with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Dean H. Kenyon is Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University, a young Earth creationist, and one of the instigators of the intelligent design movement. He is the author of Biochemical Predestination.
Giuseppe Sermonti was an Italian professor of genetics. Sermonti is well known for his criticism of natural selection as the deciding factor of human biology.
Truth in Science is a United Kingdom-based creationist organisation which promotes the Discovery Institute's "Teach the Controversy" campaign, which it uses to try to get the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design creationism taught alongside evolution in school science lessons. The organisation claims that there is scientific controversy about the validity of Darwinian evolution, a view rejected by the United Kingdom's Royal Society and over 50 Academies of Science around the world. The group is affiliated with the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, following its strategy and circulating the Institute's promotional materials.
The level of support for evolution among scientists, the public, and other groups is a topic that frequently arises in the creation–evolution controversy, and touches on educational, religious, philosophical, scientific, and political issues. The subject is especially contentious in countries where significant levels of non-acceptance of evolution by the general population exists, but evolution is taught at public schools and universities.
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but eventually came to receive near-universal acceptance in the scientific community. The observation of evolutionary processes occurring has been uncontroversial among mainstream biologists since the 1940s.
This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.
The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design is a history of the origins of anti-evolutionism by Ronald Numbers. First published in 1992 as The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism, a revised and expanded edition was published under the current title in 2006.
This article presents an overview of creationism by country.
In 1994 Fr. David Becker founded Morning Star, the first "Catholic Origins Society" in this country, which publishes an excellent journal called The Watchmaker. 3 The new American society joins its older European counterpart, Circle Scientifique et Historique (CESHE) based in Belgium, which publishes Science et Foi. The secretary of this organisation is Peter Wilders, an Englishman, who lives in Monaco. 4 The English branch of this society publishes another excellent little paper entitled Daylight: Creation Science for Catholics, edited by Anthony L. G. Nevard.