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.
Kenneth Alfred Ham is an Australian Christian fundamentalist, young Earth creationist, apologist and former science teacher, living in the United States. He is the founder, CEO, and former president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a Christian apologetics organisation that operates the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.
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.
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 Creation Museum, located in Petersburg, Kentucky, United States, is a museum that promotes the pseudoscientific young Earth creationist (YEC) explanation of the origin of the universe and life on Earth based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative of the Bible. It is operated by the Christian creation apologetics organization Answers in Genesis (AiG).
Carl Edward Baugh is an American young Earth creationist. Baugh has claimed to have discovered human footprints alongside non-avian dinosaur footprints near the Paluxy River in Texas. Baugh promoted creationism as the former host of the Creation in the 21st Century TV program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
Walter T. Brown is an American engineer, author, and 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.
Devolution, de-evolution, or backward evolution is the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time. The concept relates to the idea that evolution has a divine purpose (teleology) and is thus progressive (orthogenesis), for example that feet might be better than hooves, or lungs than gills. However, evolutionary biology makes no such assumptions, and natural selection shapes adaptations with no foreknowledge or foresights of any kind regarding the outcome. It is possible for small changes to be reversed by chance or selection, but this is no different from the normal course of evolution and as such de-evolution is not compatible with a proper understanding of evolution due to natural selection.
Dr. Carl Wieland is an Australian young Earth creationist, author and speaker. He was the managing director of Creation Ministries International, a Creationist apologetics ministry. CMI are the distributors of Creation magazine and the Journal of Creation.
Hindus have found support for, or ideas foreshadowing evolutionary ideas, in scriptures, such as the mytheme of Dashavatara, the incarnations of Vishnu starting with a fish.
Richard Milton is a British journalist and amateur archaeologist. An engineer by training, Milton has written on the topics of popular history, business, and alternative science, and published one novel.
The Creation Evidence Museum of Texas, originally Creation Evidences Museum, is a creationist museum in Glen Rose in Somervell County in central Texas, United States. Founded in 1984 by Carl Baugh for the purpose of researching and displaying exhibits that support creationism, it portrays the Earth as six thousand years old and humans coexisting with non-avian dinosaurs, disputing that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old and non-avian dinosaurs became extinct 65.5 million years before human beings arose.
Michael A. Cremo, also known by his devotional name Drutakarmā dāsa, is an American freelance researcher who describes himself as a Vedic creationist and an "alternative archeologist." He argues that humans have lived on Earth for millions of years. Based on artifacts allegedly found in the Eocene auriferous gravels of Table Mountain, California and discussed in his book Forbidden Archeology, Cremo argues for the existence of modern humans on Earth as early as 30 to 40 million years ago. Forbidden Archeology, which he wrote with Richard L. Thompson, has attracted criticism from mainstream scholars, who describe it as pseudoscientific.
Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race is a 1993 pseudoarchaeological book by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, written in association with the Bhaktivedanta Institute of ISKCON. Cremo states that the book has "over 900 pages of well-documented evidence suggesting that modern man did not evolve from ape man, but instead has co-existed with apes for millions of years!", and that the scientific establishment has suppressed the fossil evidence of extreme human antiquity. Cremo identifies as a "Vedic archeologist", since he believes his findings support the story of humanity described in the Vedas. He says a knowledge filter is the cause of the supposed suppression.
Jeffrey Goodman is an independent American archaeologist with training in geology and archaeology. His early career was in oil exploration.
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.
Richard Leslie Thompson, also known as Sadaputa Dasa, was an American mathematician, author and Gaudiya Vaishnava religious figure. Historian Meera Nanda described him as a driving intellectual force of 'Vedic creationism' as co-author of Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race (1993), a work that has attracted significant criticism from the scientific community. Thompson also published several books and articles on the relationship between religion and science, Hindu cosmology and astronomy. He was a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and a founding member of the Bhaktivedanta Institute dedicated to examining the relationship of modern scientific theories to the Vaishnava worldview. In the 'science and religion' community he was known for his articulation of ISKCON's view of science. Danish historian of religion Mikael Rothstein described Thompson as "the single dominating writer on science" in ISKCON whom ISKCON has chosen to "cover the field of science more or less on his own". C. Mackenzie Brown, professor of religion at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, described him as "the leading figure" in ISKCON's critique of modern science.
The debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on the question "Is Creation A Viable Model of Origins?" was held February 4, 2014, at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
