Part of the series on Creationism

History of creationism Creation in Genesis Genesis as an allegory The Creation of Light by Gustave Doré. In many religious traditions, creationism is ideological support of the belief that humanity, life, the Earth, or the universe as a whole was specially created by a supreme being (often referred to specifically as God[1]) or by other forms of supernatural intervention. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The history of creationism is tied to the history of religions. ... Creation according to Genesis refers to the description of the creation of the heavens and the earth by God, as described in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. ... Allegorical interpretations of Genesis is devoted to historical and contemporary non-literal regarding the book of Genesis. ...

Types of creationism: Creation science Intelligent design Islamic creationism Modern geocentrism Neo-Creationism Omphalos creationism Old Earth creationism Progressive creationism Theistic evolution Young Earth creationism Creation science is an umbrella term for the creationist movement to reconcile the biblical account of creation with modern science. ... Intelligent design (ID) is the concept that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. ... Islamic creationism – While contemporary Islam tends to take religious texts very literally, it sees Genesis as a corrupted version of Gods message. ... The term modern geocentrism refers to a belief currently held by certain groups that the Earth is the center of the universe and does not move. ... Neo-creationism is a movement whose goal is to restate creationism in terms more likely to be well received by the public, policy makers, educators, and the scientific community. ... The omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book by Philip Henry Gosse in which he argued that in order for the world to be functional, God must have created the Earth with mountains, canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels... Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts that new species have appeared successively over earths long history but that, to a greater or lesser degree, each species represents a fiat miracle (thus the creationism part), and that the first pair or representatives of species were... Theistic evolution, less commonly known as evolutionary creationism, is not a theory in the scientific sense, but a particular view about how the science of evolution relates to some religious interpretations. ... Adam and Eve, the first human beings according to Genesis Young Earth creationism is a religious doctrine which teaches that the Earth and life on Earth were created by a direct action of God relatively recently (about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago). ...

Controversy: Creation vs. evolution ... in public education Associated articles Teach the Controversy The creation-evolution controversy (also termed the creation vs. ... The legal status of creation and evolution in public education is the subject of a great deal of debate in legal, political and religious circles, mainly in the United States. ... The following is a clearinghouse of articles which refer to terms often used in the context of the creation-evolution controversy: // Origins Main article: Origin beliefs The creation-evolution controversy often is cast as a controversy surrounding the origin beliefs. ... Teach the Controversy is a slogan the Discovery Institute uses to promote intelligent design[1] and advance an education policy for US public schools which introduces creationist explanations for the origin of life to public-school science curricula. ...

Old Earth creationism is a variant of the creationist view of the origin of the universe and life on Earth. It is currently the view of many Catholic and Protestant Christians, and is typically more compatible with mainstream scientific thought, on the issues of the age of the Universe or Earth, than Young Earth creationism. However, it still takes the accounts of creation in Genesis more literally than evolutionary creationists. See also Progressive creationism. The Creation of Light by Gustave Doré. In many religious traditions, creationism is ideological support of the belief that humanity, life, the Earth, or the universe as a whole was specially created by a supreme being (often referred to specifically as God[1]) or by other forms of supernatural intervention. ... The deepest visible-light image of the cosmos, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. ... Earth (IPA: , often referred to as the Earth, Terra, or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ... Protestantism is one of three primary branches of Christianity. ... Adam and Eve, the first human beings according to Genesis Young Earth creationism is a religious doctrine which teaches that the Earth and life on Earth were created by a direct action of God relatively recently (about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago). ... Creation according to Genesis refers to the description of the creation of the heavens and the earth by God, as described in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. ... Theistic evolution, less commonly known as evolutionary creationism, is not a theory in the scientific sense, but a particular view about how the science of evolution relates to some religious interpretations. ... Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts that new species have appeared successively over earths long history but that, to a greater or lesser degree, each species represents a fiat miracle (thus the creationism part), and that the first pair or representatives of species were...

Types of Old Earth Creationism

Gap Creationism

One type of Old Earth creationism is Gap creationism. This view states that life was immediately created on a pre-existing old Earth. One variant rests on a literal reading of Genesis 1:1-2 as, "In the beginning ... [when] the earth was formless and void." This is taken by Gap creationists to imply that the earth already existed, but had passed into decay during an earlier age of existence, and was being "shaped anew". This view is more consistent with mainstream science with respect to the age of the Earth, but still often resembles Young Earth creationism in many respects (often seeing the "days" as 24-hour days). This view was popularized in 1909 by the Scofield Reference Bible. Gap Creationism, also called Restitution creationism or Ruin-Reconstruction, are terms used to describe a particular set of Christian beliefs about the creation of the Universe and the origin of man. ... Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, having the meanings of birth, creation, cause, beginning, source and origin) is the first book of the Torah, the first book of the Tanakh and also the first book of the Christian Old Testament. ... The Scofield Reference Bible is a widely circulated annotated study Bible that was edited and annotated by Bible scholar Cyrus I. Scofield. ...

Some theologians translate "the earth was without form" in Genesis 1:2 to mean "the earth became without form". The word 'was', hayah, can also be correctly interpreted as 'became'.

Day-Age Creationism

Main article: Day-Age Creationism

More commonly, advocates of an old Earth hold that the six days referred to are not ordinary 24-hour days, but rather the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) can be interpreted in this context to mean a long period of time (thousands or millions of years) rather than a 24-hour day. The Genesis account is then interpreted as an account of a progressive creation, or sometimes a summary of life's evolutionary history. This view is often called "Day-Age Creationism". Day-Age Creationism, a type of Old Earth Creationism, is an effort to reconcile the literal Genesis account of Creation with modern scientific theories on the age of the Universe, the Earth, life, and humans. ... Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, having the meanings of birth, creation, cause, beginning, source and origin) is the first book of the Torah, the first book of the Tanakh and also the first book of the Christian Old Testament. ... Day-Age Creationism, a type of Old Earth Creationism, is an effort to reconcile the literal Genesis account of Creation with modern scientific theories on the age of the Universe, the Earth, life, and humans. ...

There are a variety of ways in which the events in the creation account are interpreted. Some closely resemble the order of events as held by Young Earth creationism. In this view on the first "day" God is said to have created light; on the second, the firmament of heaven; on the third, the separation between water and land, and the creation of plant life; on the fourth the sun, moon, and stars; on the fifth created marine life and birds; on the sixth land animals, and man and woman. Adam and Eve, the first human beings according to Genesis Young Earth creationism is a religious doctrine which teaches that the Earth and life on Earth were created by a direct action of God relatively recently (about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago). ...

The order of light, then the firmament, then stars, might be taken as a simplified description of modern theories of cosmology, namely the Big Bang, followed by cosmic inflation, followed by stellar evolution. Similarly, modern zoology believes that marine animals preceded land animals. Cosmology, as a branch of astrophysics, is the study of the large-scale structure of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. ... According to the Big Bang, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state (bottom). ... Cosmic inflation is the idea, first proposed by Alan Guth in 1981, that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion (the inflationary epoch) that was driven by a negative pressure vacuum energy density. ... In astronomy, stellar evolution is the sequence of changes that a star undergoes during its lifetime; the hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of years during which it emits light and heat. ... Zoology is the biological discipline which involves the study of animals. ...

Critics of this old Earth view of Creationism comment that the order of the days of creation are inconsistent with modern scientific interpretation. For example, the Earth is unlikely to have existed before the Sun and all other stars, plant life could not have survived millennia without sunlight, flowering plants could not have been pollinated without insect life, and most birds could not survive long without terrestrial life.

Other Old Earth creationism camps hold that the Sun, Moon and Stars were only given their mission or status by God on the fourth day, not literally created ex nihilo. Some believe that the phrase "Let there be light" implies only that light was made visible from the context of the surface of the earth (where the Spirit of the Lord was said to be moving upon the face of the waters) due to the removal of an opaque atmosphere. The Sun, Moon and stars were only made completely visible "for signs and for seasons and for days and years" in the fourth period when the atmosphere was made fully transparent and that the Sun was in existence well before the Earth. The "earth" mentioned in the first verse would be the cosmos as it existed in before the Big Bang, not literally the Earth itself in its modern form. The Hebrew phrase "shamayim erets" (Heavens and the earth) always refers to the entire Universe. It is also possible that the first verse "In the beginning ..." was only a summary of the account that would follow. The exact placement of particular creatures within the creation account such as insects and other forms of life are not necessarily mentioned in the text. The exact length and equality or overlap of "days" may vary from model to model.

The Framework Hypothesis

The Framework Hypothesis notes that there is a pattern or "framework" present in the Genesis account and that, because of this, the account may or may not have been intended to be read as a strict chronological account of creation. This view is broad enough that proponents of other old earth views (such as many Day-Age creationists) have no problem with many of the key points put forward by the hypothesis regarding a pattern within the Genesis account, but they believe that there is a certain amount of chronology present. While this view is not explicitly old Earth, its proponents usually are.

Cosmic Time

Gerald Schroeder puts forth a view which tries to reconcile 24-hour creation days with an age of billions of years for the universe by noting, as creationist Phillip E. Johnson summarizes in his article "What Would Newton Do?": “the Bible speaks of time from the viewpoint of the universe as a whole, which Schroeder interprets to mean at the moment of "quark confinement," when stable matter formed from energy early in the first second of the big bang.” Schroeder calculates that a period of six days under the conditions of quark confinement, when the universe was approximately a million times smaller and hotter than it is today, is equal to fifteen billion years of earth time. Thus Genesis and modern physics are reconciled. One problem with this approach is that it puts the creation of the Earth approximately eight billion years earlier than modern scientific theories and it may be incorrect with respect to the viewpoint of creation.[1] Dr. Gerald Schroeder is a former professor of nuclear physics at MIT and former member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. ... Phillip E. Johnson Phillip E. Johnson (born 1940) is a retired UC Berkeley American law professor and author. ... Quarks are one of the two basic constituents of matter in the Standard Model of particle physics. ...

Progressive Creationism

Progressive Creationism is the idea that God allows certain natural process to affect creation but has also intervened at key moments in life’s history to guide those processes or, in some views, create new species altogether (often to replenish the earth). This view can be applied (as it often is) to virtually any of the Old Earth views. It is usually only promoted by Old Earth creationists, as Young-Earth creationists see everything in the fossil record as being created in six 24-hour days. Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts that new species have appeared successively over earths long history but that, to a greater or lesser degree, each species represents a fiat miracle (thus the creationism part), and that the first pair or representatives of species were...

Broader Reasoning

There are a number of other reasons that Old earth creationists cite for belief in an old Earth that are often (though not always) held commonly by Gap, Day-Age and other old earth views. One argument is that there are a number of passages which seem to indicate the antiquity of Earth (many of which are poetic) for example Proverbs 8:22-31, although they are also compatible with a 6,000-year-old earth which is likewise "old" from the perspective of a human lifetime.[2] Others seem to relate the age of the Earth (or some aspects of Earth) to the eternal nature of God (implying great antiquity), although strict interpretation would prove too much, as old-earth creationists don't believe that the earth is eternal, Old Earth creationists argue that antiquity much greater than a few thousand years is implied. One claimed passage is Psalm 90 (which is said to demonstrate that the passage of time can be considerably different from God’s perspective, although others claim it shows that God is outside time).

Many (Roman Catholics especially) also see a belief in an old Earth as predicated upon the view of Thomism, that the words of the Bible (Special revelation) ought to be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the record of nature (general revelation). Thomism is the philosophical school that followed in the legacy of St. ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... General revelation is a theological term which refers to a universal aspect of God, his knowledge and of spiritual matters, discovered through natural means, such as observation of nature (the physcial universe), philosophy and reasoning, human conscience or providence or providential history. ...

Old Earth creationists are also often quick to point out that belief in any one interpretation of Genesis should not be considered a foundational issue or requirement for faith in God, as such a position limits a believer's faith to earthly and not spiritual matters.

See also

• Young Earth Creationism, a competing viewpoint
• Day-Age Creationism
• Progressive creationism
• Gap Creationism
• Timeline of the Universe
• Creation science
• Creator god
• Dating Creation
• Cosmogony
• Cosmological argument
• Biblical cosmology
• Theism

Adam and Eve, the first human beings according to Genesis Young Earth creationism is a religious doctrine which teaches that the Earth and life on Earth were created by a direct action of God relatively recently (about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago). ... Day-Age Creationism, a type of Old Earth Creationism, is an effort to reconcile the literal Genesis account of Creation with modern scientific theories on the age of the Universe, the Earth, life, and humans. ... Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts that new species have appeared successively over earths long history but that, to a greater or lesser degree, each species represents a fiat miracle (thus the creationism part), and that the first pair or representatives of species were... Gap Creationism, also called Restitution creationism or Ruin-Reconstruction, are terms used to describe a particular set of Christian beliefs about the creation of the Universe and the origin of man. ... This is a timeline of the Universe describes the events that have occurred and will occur according to prominent theories. ... Creation science is an umbrella term for the creationist movement to reconcile the biblical account of creation with modern science. ... God is the divine being that created the omniverse. ... Cultures throughout history have believed the world formed or was formed at some time in the past, so methods of dating Creation have involved analysing scriptures and physical data. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The cosmological argument is an argument for the existence of God, also traditionally known as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, and also as the uncaused cause argument. ... It has been suggested that Biblical astronomy be merged into this article or section. ... Theism is the belief in the existence of one or more gods or deities. ...

External links

• Reasons to Believe An Old-Earth, Day-Age site with a number of resources
• Answers In Creation An Old Earth site purporting to demonstrate the flaws in young earth creationism
• ‘Progressive creationism’: why is it wrong to add billions of years to the Bible? from Answers in Genesis, A Young-Earth site purporting to demonstrate the theological flaws in old-earth creationism
• New Creationism.org Old-Earth Creationism Site
• Does God Exist?
• God and Science
• Notable Christians Open to an Old Earth Interpretation
• Genesis 2:5 and the Framework Hypothosis, by Michael Butler

AiGs logo Answers in Genesis (AiG) is a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry with a particular focus on Young Earth Creationism, and a literal or plain [5] interpretation of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis. ...

Further reading

• Schroeder, Gerald , Genesis and the Big Bang Theory: The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, 1991, ISBN 0-553-35413-2 (articulates Old Earth Creationism)
• Ross, Hugh, A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy, 2004, ISBN 1-57683-375-5 (Details why Old Earth Creationism is the literal Biblical view)
• Ross, Hugh, The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis, 2001, ISBN 1-57683-230-9 (Details the agreement of science with Old Earth Creationism]
• David G. Hagopian, editor, The Genesis Debate : Three Views on the Days of Creation, 2000, ISBN 0-9702245-0-8 (Three pairs of scholars present and debate the three most widespread evangelical interpretations of the creation days)
• Refuting Compromise (ISBN 0-89051-411-9) 2004 (critique of old-earth creationism, in particular that of Ross, Hugh)

Introductory chapter and some reviews

• Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the Bible, 1995, ISBN 1-55661-679-1 (by a Christadelphian old-earth creationist)