Evolution of Creationism

Ask creationists if their idea evolves and you will likely hear that it can't. Their idea is a solid, unmovable thing. It upholds a single truth for the ages.The reality, of course, is different.There are many ways to be a 'creationist.' The labels YEC and OEC and ID were invented to accommodate the varieties of belief that fall under the category. The ID advocates of recent years were keenly aware of this. They promoted their idea in part as a 'big tent' under which the varieties of creationist belief could unite.The big tent was not so big, though, as to include theistic evolutionists. No matter how devout theistic evolutionists may be, or how much they believe God stands ultimately behind all things, creationists deny them recognition. Theistic evolutionists cannot join the creationist club because creationists view them as people who have given away the store.The term 'creationism' thus does not refer to a single idea people believe. It takes its meaning from a single idea they deny. The idea that unites creationists is the theory of evolution. They are against it. 'Creationism' is really evolution denial.Evolution denial goes through its fashions and fads. Today you see YECs attributing almost any geological phenomenon to a global Flood, maintaining a 1970s fashion set by Whitcomb & Morris. But where did the water for the Flood come from? Morris made much of a 'vapor canopy' that supplied it. YECs today are loathe to mention this idea. Morris's book made much of the human footprints displayed by Carl Baugh. Prominent YECs now repudiate Baugh.Many assertions are being discarded. Answers in Genesis maintains a page showing 'Arguments We Think Creationists Should NOT Make.' In recent years the list has lengthened substantially.Creationists as recently as the 1980s denied biological evolution in any form. They denied natural selection, benign mutation, speciation, and genetic relationships between species. Now they admit the reality of all these things.Creationism is evolving.The creationist species faces a transformed environment. The burgeoning number of discoveries in recent years presents mighty challenges to its ability to survive. Its survival is further threatened by the ongoing rejection of creationism as science in US courtrooms. The species's vital characteristic--denial--is growing ever harder to maintain.Creationism has responded to this threat as bacteria respond to a new antibiotic. Some organisms disappear. Others mutate.

What changes have you noticed in creationist beliefs, tactics, fads and fashions?

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What further evolution of the creationist genome do you anticipate?

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Which mutation of the creationist genome do you think is best adapted for survival in the new environment?

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Which variant of creationism is least adapted for survival?

_Edited by Archer Opterix, : Natural evolution of the text.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Punctuated equilibrium.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

moved here by AdminJarEdited by AdminJar, : No reason given.

this is a dandy topic AO, i like it one of the big ones i see is the new hyper-evolution in "kinds" since the flood argument. or the flood layered the strata, denying how floods work argument i see in the future if we continue to study the genome of animals and dna, a shift in how dna reflects gods design, though i'm not sure how conisidering how hard it is to get them to admit what they do now the best one is a form of TE like jar has, it doesn't make god out to be an idiot or do things that are full of illogic YEC and ID, YEC for being logically absurd and UD for lying to people about what it doesjust to add to this, i would say the most interesting thing about creationism, is the claim that people 200-300 years ago share thier views
for example saying because kelvin or pascel or any naturalist is a creationist is a bogus statement. but they like to use this argument as if it holds some weight when infact none of those people would hold their views of god or reality. its a form of equivlation christian = creationist, when infact its not remotely the samething, because creationism is more than just a belief in god creating the world.

Before I answer this question, I must point out that the theory of evolution as a whole is more likely to die out in a blink of an eye than creation myths. Everybody knows what a tv is, but only a few people know how it works or how to build one. The theory of evolution... science as a whole is like a super structure that can potentially collapse at a moment's notice. All it takes is another collapse of civilization like the ones we have observed in the past.Creationism, on the other hand, does not require any kind of learning or thinking. Like all other creation myths, all it takes is a person to tell a story to a child and the tradition is passed on.In other words, all the so-called "creation science" stuff that have sprung out of the original creation myth are most likely to die out first. As to the rest, I don't care if we have a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, the 6 days creation account will continue to live on.

Hi Archer,I think it would be really interesting to build a phylogeny of the world religions, in which each faith is a leaf of the tree. It could be done using the known historical events leading to the formation of different schools of thought or it could be done using dogma (i.e. monotheistic versus polythestic, written versus oral tradition, resurrection versus reincarnation, etc) as binary phylogenetic characers.The first phylogeny based on known historical events would of course be accurate, and would allow creationists to face the historical contingency of their beliefs. The second phylogeny based on the phylogenetic method would be of interest in identifying homology, parallelism and divergence amongst the world faiths. It could be used to test my hypothesis that extremist islam and extremist christianity are sister taxa. In any case the trees would make great visual aids.But I won't be doing it myself until they put religious data into genbank.MickEdited by mick, : No reason given.Edited by mick, : No reason given.

In the U.S. one of the driving forces is the need to pretend to be scientific. If they can get away with that then they can get their sectarion religious beliefs into science lessons. Yes, it's a pretty dishonest tactic but dishonesty doesn't seem to be something they're concerned about.So the U.S. got "Creation Science". Pretty much as soon as that had flopped "ID" got invented as a replacement with much the same aim in mind. Of course they had to throw out stuff that was too obviously Bible-based (like the Young Earth) which didn't sit will with many YECs but even some YECs backed the tactic.

I don't think anyone demonizes these people but I can't help to believe that these people over at answersingenesis Ken Ham and the like are good, competent people that happen to be fervently religious. I must say I deeply respect this.To be more on topic,
when creationists say that creationism doesn't change I've thought they were simply referring to the Word of God. I was looking for a source to support this statement but I'm sure everyone here is well versed enough in articles where the "inerrant Word of God" has been referred to as unchanging. They obviously have to adapt their scientific arguments because science changes daily, all of the physical sciences do. Everytime there is a new find in anthropology (for example:florensis), physics (string theory) and what not.
I checked out the site and they are proponents for logic and reasoning. Overall they're doing a lot more good than the televangelists and Hovind types. Anyone know where their "creation science museum" is based?I must admit however that I am quite partial to creationism and Christian fundamentalism. I find beauty in it. Paulk sees a dishonesty in the movement of creationism overall but I see a honesty. With establishing a worldview that makes you something in rejection of evolution.

You might be interested at a limited attempt to do something similar.Reconstruction of organisational phylogeny from memetic similarity analysis: Proof of feasibilityIn this paper Lord and Price try to construct a memetic phylogeny of post-reformation christian sects.TTFN,WK

cool! thanks for the link.I wish I could have an original idea once in my life, though...

Inspired perhaps, by the activities of its opposite number

Oh goody. Humanity sinks back into mass ignorance and myth returns to the top of the tree. Hallelujah.

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Paulk sees a dishonesty in the movement of creationism overall but I see a honesty.

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It's not just my opinins. Judges have agreed when the matter came to trial.Here's some quotes from Judge Overton's deciison in the Arkansas case. And of the attempts to claim that the views taught were not specifically Fundamentalist Christian beliefs: Every time someone tries to get creationism into schools - and that incudes ID - they deny the religious aspects. Even when the religious aspect is blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to examine the evidence. Is that honest ?

Of course. Not many decades ago creationist denied that speciation happened. (based on how obvious it is that the bible's "kind" is refering to what we call species today).Now a large fraction of the creationist community has backed away from that since speciation has been amply demonstrated. They even learned a lesson. They no longer define kind clearly enough to allow it to be ripped to pieces again.Of course, as shown by posters here, there are many creationists who still haven't gotten the message and still deny speciation but the mainstream (depending on how you define that) has moved on because of scientific developments.I don't expect it to evolve as drammatically in the next couple of decades. I think they are now backed deep into a corner. The only "out" left now seems to be to simply deny evidence. Any further retreat and their position is in shreds.

YECs have retreated so much you have to ask what's left. They allow evolution itself now. They even depend on it to get out of jams. We've seen it here. YECs can invoke more evolution in a shorter space of time than Charles Darwin on a fourth fifth of Jack Daniels.So what's left to circle the wagons around?Special creation for humans, obviously. What else? Anything?_

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Nope