Progressive creationism

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Progressive creationism is the religious belief that God created new forms of life gradually, over a period of hundreds of millions of years. As a form of Old Earth creationism, it accepts mainstream geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth, but posits that the new "kinds" of plants and animals that have appeared successively over the planet's history represent instances of God directly intervening to create those new types by means outside the realm of science. Progressive creationists generally reject macroevolution because they believe it to be biologically untenable and not supported by the fossil record, and they generally reject the concept of universal descent from a last universal ancestor. These individuals thus reject a great deal of the scientific consensus regarding the evidence for evolution.

Historical development

The idea that there had been a series of episodes of divine creation of new species with many thousands of years in between them, serving to prepare the world for the eventual arrival of humanity, was popular with Anglican geologists like William Buckland in the early 19th century; they proposed it as an explanation for the patterns of faunal succession in the fossil record that showed that the types of organisms that lived on the earth had changed over time. Buckland explained the idea in detail in his book Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology (1836), which was one of the eight Bridgewater Treatises. This idea was proposed in part as a counter to pre-Darwin theories on the transmutation of species.^[1]

Georges Cuvier also proposed that there had been a series of sucessive creations due to catastrophism, Curvier believed that God regionally destroyed previously created forms through flooding and after replaced the regions with new forms.^[2] The French naturalist Alcide d'Orbigny also held similar ideas, he linked different stages in the Geologic time scale to separate creation events. At the time these ideas were not popular with strict Christians. In defense of the theory of sucessive creations, Marcel de Serres (1783–1862) a french geologist suggested that new creations grow more and more perfect as the time goes on.^[3]

Other advocates of progressive creationism included the geologist Hugh Miller who argued for many separate creation events brought about by divine interventions, he explained his ideas in his book The testimony of the rocks; or, Geology in its bearings on the two theologies, natural and revealed in 1857.^[4] Louis Agassiz also argued for separate divine creations. In his work he noted similarities of distribution of like species in different geological era; a phenomenon clearly not the result of migration. Agassiz questioned how fish of the same species live in lakes well separated with no joining waterway, Agassiz concluded they were created at both locations. According to Agassiz the intelligent adaptation of creatures to their environments testified to an intelligent plan. The conclusions of his studies lead him to believe that whichever region each animal was found in, was created there “animals are naturally autochthones wherever they are found”. After further research he later extended this idea to humans, he wrote that different races had been created separately, this became known as his theory of polygenesis.^[5][6]

Revival

The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) was founded in the early 1940s as an organisation of orthodox Christian scientists.^[7] Although its original leadership favoured Biblical literalism and it was intended to be anti-evolutionary, it rejected the creationist theories propounded by George McCready Price‎ (young Earth creationism) and Harry Rimmer (gap creationism), and it was soon moving rapidly in the direction of theistic evolution, with some members "stopping off" on the less Modernist view that they called "progressive creationism." It was a view developed in the 1930s by Wheaton College graduate Russell L. Mixter.^[8] In 1954 evangelical philosopher and theologian Bernard Ramm (an associate of the inner circle of the ASA) wrote The Christian View of Science and Scripture, advocating Progressive Creationism which did away with the necessity for a young Earth, a global flood and the recent appearance of humans.^[9]

Modern progressive creationism

In contrast to young Earth creationists, progressive creationists accept the geological column, of the progressive appearance of plants and animals through time. To their viewpoint it reflects the order in which God sequentially created kinds, starting with simple, single-celled organisms and progressing through to complex multicellular organisms and the present day. They do not however accept the scientific consensus that these kinds evolved from each other, and believe that kinds are genetically limited, such that one cannot change into another.^[10] In other words, progressive creationists deny much of the evidence for evolution that built the scientific consensus. For instance, denial of macroevolution is one of many objections to evolution which have been addressed (see also introduction to evolution).

Proponents of the Progressive creation theory include astronomer-turned-apologist Hugh Ross, whose organization, Reasons To Believe, accepts the scientifically determined age of the Earth but seeks to disprove Darwinian evolution.^[10] Answers in Creation is another organization, set up in 2003, which supports progressive creationism. The main focus of Answers In Creation is to provide rebuttals to the scientific claims of young earth creationism which are widely regarded as a pseudoscience.^{[citation needed]}

Interpretation of Genesis

See also: Genesis creation narrative

Bernard Ramm adopted the view (developed by P. J. Wiseman) that "creation was revealed [pictorially] in six days, not performed in six days", with God intervening periodically to create new "root-species" which then "radiated" out. This allowed geological formations such as coal to form naturally, so that they "might appear a natural product an not an artificial insertion in Nature", prior to the creation of mankind.^[11]

Progressive creationist and astrophysicist Hugh Ross adheres to a literal translation of Genesis 1 and 2 and holds to the principle that "Scripture interprets Scripture” to shed light on the context of the Creation account.^[12] Using this principle, Progressive Creationist Alan Hayward cites Hebrews 4, which discusses in the context of the creation story, a continued Seventh Day of creation.^[13] Ross ties this literal view of a lengthy seventh day to the Creation account in which he describes the Hebrew word "yom" to have multiple translation possibilities, ranging from 24 hours, year, time, age, or eternity/always.^[14] Ross contends that at the end of each Genesis "day", with the exception of the seventh "day", the phrase, “…and there was evening and there was morning,” is used to put a terminus to each event.^[15] The omission of that phrase on the Seventh Day, is in harmony with the literal translation of Hebrews 4’s continuing Seventh Day.^[16] From a theological perspective, Robert Newman addresses a problem with this particular model of lengthy Genesis days, in that it puts physical plant and animal death before the fall of man, which according to most Young Earth Creationism is considered unscriptural. Old Earth Creationists interpret death due to the fall of man as spiritual death specifically related to the context of man himself. Another problem with Progressive Creationism is due to the complicated nature of a model that arises from an attempt not to favor science over Scripture and vice versa, potentially angering both schools of thought with this compromise.^[17]

Notes

1. ^ Cadbury(2000) p190-194
2. ^ A Companion to Biological Anthropology, Clark Spencer Larsen, 2010, p. 555
3. ^ Gabriel Gohau, Albert V. Carozzi, Marguerite Carozzi, A history of geology, 1990, p. 161
4. ^ Science and religion in the nineteenth century, Tess Cosslett, 1984, p. 67
5. ^ Scott Mandelbrote, Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700–Present, Volume 2, 2009, pp. 159–164
6. ^ A Companion to Biological Anthropology, Clark Spencer Larsen, 2010 p. 556
7. ^ Numbers(2006) p181
8. ^ Numbers(2006) p194-195
9. ^ Numbers(2006) p208
10. ^ ^{a b} Eugenie C. Scott (December 7, 2000). "The Creation/Evolution Continuum". National Center for Science Education. http://ncse.com/creationism/general/creationevolution-continuum. Retrieved 2010-12-03.  including text from Chapter 3 of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, second edition, 2009, by Eugenie C. Scott.
11. ^ Numbers(2006) p210-211
12. ^ Ross(2004) p71
13. ^ Heyward(1995) p177
14. ^ Ross(1994) p46
15. ^ Ross(2004) p76
16. ^ Ross(2004) p81
17. ^ Newman(September 1995) p172

References

• Cadbury, Deborah (2000). The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World. Fourth Estate, London. ISBN 185702963. 

• Hayward, Alan (March 1995). Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the Bible. Bethany House Publishers. ISBN 1-55661-679-1. 

• Jastrow, Robert (2000). God and the Astronomers: Second Edition. W. W. Norton & Company; 2 edition. ISBN 0393850064. 

• Newman, Robert (September 1995). Scientific and Religious Aspects of the Origins Debate. The American Scientific Affiliation. 

• Numbers, Ronald (November 30, 2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition. Harvard University Press. p. 624 pages. ISBN 0674023390. 

• Ross, Hugh (March 2004). A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy. Navpress Publishing Group. ISBN 1-57683-375-5. 

• Ross, Hugh (March 1994). Creation and Time: A Biblical and Scientific Perspective on the Creation-Date Controversy. Navpress Publishing Group. ISBN 0891097775. 

External links

• Reasons To Believe, Pasadena, CA.
• Research and Essays on Evolution and the Bible
• Progressive Creation: An Overview
• Essays and Biblical Studies on the Big Bang and Evolution
• Hugh Ross and ‘progressive creationism’: why is it wrong to add billions of years to the Bible?