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.
In geology, catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. This contrasts with uniformitarianism, according to which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, brought about all the Earth's geological features. The proponents of uniformitarianism held that the present was "the key to the past", and that all geological processes throughout the past resembled those that can be observed today. Since the 19th-century disputes between catastrophists and uniformitarians, a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, in which the scientific consensus accepts that some catastrophic events occurred in the geologic past, but regards these as explicable as extreme examples of natural processes which can occur.
Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-American psychoanalyst, writer, and catastrophist. He is the author of several books offering pseudohistorical interpretations of ancient history, including the U.S. bestseller Worlds in Collision published in 1950. Velikovsky's work is frequently cited as a canonical example of pseudoscience and has been used as an example of the demarcation problem.
Pseudoarchaeology—also known as alternative archaeology, fringe archaeology, fantastic archaeology, cult archaeology, and spooky archaeology—is the interpretation of the past by people who are not professional archaeologists and who reject or ignore the accepted data gathering and analytical methods of the discipline. These pseudoscientific interpretations involve the use of artifacts, sites or materials to construct scientifically insubstantial theories to strengthen the pseudoarchaeologists' claims. Methods include exaggeration of evidence, dramatic or romanticized conclusions, use of fallacious arguments, and fabrication of evidence.
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 about 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespread version, YEC is based on the religious belief in the inerrancy of certain literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis. Its primary adherents are Christians and Jews who believe that God created the Earth in six literal days. This is in contrast with old Earth creationism (OEC), which holds literal interpretations of Genesis that are compatible with the scientifically determined ages of the Earth and universe. It is also in contrast to theistic evolution, which posits that the scientific principles of evolution, the Big Bang, abiogenesis, solar nebular theory, age of the universe, and age of Earth are compatible with a metaphorical interpretation of the Genesis creation account.
Flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the Genesis flood narrative, the flood myth in the Hebrew Bible. In the early 19th century, diluvial geologists hypothesized that specific surface features provided evidence of a worldwide flood which had followed earlier geological eras; after further investigation they agreed that these features resulted from local floods or from glaciers. In the 20th century, young-Earth creationists revived flood geology as an overarching concept in their opposition to evolution, assuming a recent six-day Creation and cataclysmic geological changes during the biblical flood, and incorporating creationist explanations of the sequences of rock strata.
Answers in Genesis (AiG) is an American fundamentalist Christian apologetics parachurch organization. It advocates Young Earth creationism on the basis of its literal, historical-grammatical interpretation of the Book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole. Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, it rejects the results of scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative and instead supports pseudoscientific creation science. The organization sees evolution as incompatible with the Bible and believes anything other than the young Earth view is a compromise on the principle of biblical inerrancy.
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 Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications is a 1961 book by young Earth creationists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris that, according to Ronald Numbers, elevated young Earth creationism "to a position of fundamentalist orthodoxy."
Livio Catullo Stecchini was an Italian professor of ancient history at Paterson State Teachers College in New Jersey. He wrote on the history of science, ancient weights and measures (metrology), and the history of cartography in antiquity. He is best known as a defender of the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky and for his numerological theories about the dimensions of the Great Pyramids.
Vine Victor Deloria Jr. was an author, theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped attract national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964 to 1967, he served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing its membership of tribes from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and in Washington, DC, on the Mall.
A New Theory of the Earth is a book written by William Whiston, in which he presents a description of the divine creation of the Earth and a posited global flood. He also postulates that the earth originated from the atmosphere of a comet and that all major changes in earth's history can be attributed to the action of comets. It was published in 1696 and was well received by intellectuals of the day such as Isaac Newton and John Locke.
Worlds in Collision is a book by Immanuel Velikovsky published in 1950. The book postulates that around the 15th century BC, the planet Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object and passed near Earth. The object allegedly changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes that are mentioned in early mythologies and religions from around the world. The book has been heavily criticized as a work of pseudoscience and catastrophism, and many of its claims are completely rejected by the established scientific community as they are not supported by any available evidence.
Charles Leroy Ellenberger is perhaps best known as a one-time advocate, but now a critic, of controversial writer Immanuel Velikovsky and his works on catastrophism. He first read Worlds in Collision in 1969. In 1979, he became a contributing editor to the Velikovsky-inspired Kronos journal, and has contributed material to many other publications. In 1980 he was selected by the editor of Astronomy magazine to debate James Oberg on Velikovsky.
Pensée: Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered ("IVR") was a special series of ten issues of the magazine Pensée advancing the pseudoscientific theories of Immanuel Velikovsky. It was produced to "encourage continuing critical analysis of all questions raised by Velikovsky's work", published between May 1972 and Winter 1974-75 by the Student Academic Freedom Forum, whose president was David N. Talbott, with the assistance and cooperation of Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon. Velikovsky -- "the man whose work was being examined 'objectively'" insinuated himself into the editing of the May 1972 issue, just as he had done earlier for the April 1967 "Velikovsky" issue of Yale Scientific Magazine.
Robert J. (Bob) Schadewald was an author, researcher, and former president of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). An internationally recognized expert on pseudoscience, Schadewald penned numerous articles on creationism, perpetual motion, flat earthism, and other pseudoscience for such magazines as Science 80, Technology Illustrated, Smithsonian, and Science Digest.
Michael Wulf Friedlander was a South African-born American physicist and skeptic. Friedlander was professor emeritus of physics at Washington University in St. Louis. His research involved the study of cosmic rays and gamma ray astronomy. He is the author of the book At The Fringes Of Science (1998), a scholarly study of fringe science. The book is notable for its criticism of the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky.
Scientific dissent is dissent from scientific consensus. Disagreements can be useful for finding problems in underlying assumptions, methodologies, and reasoning, as well as for generating and testing new ways of tackling the unknown. In modern times, with the increased role of science on the society and the politicization of science, a new aspect gained prominence: effects of scientific dissent on public policies.
Michael Dan Gordin is an American science historian and Slavist.
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