The Beginning of History

These Christian curricula herald the Bible as the authoritative text for interpreting the earliest history of the world. On the basis of their insistence on biblical inerrancy, they present fundamental positions that underlie their historical analysis, as follows. The Bible establishes Young Earth creationism, divides human beings into races, and stipulates that God established government as limited. The Tower of Babel indicts humanism and efforts to unify governments or societies. The Creation Mandate, taken from the Book of Genesis, endorses both human control of the earth and Christian hegemony. Mosaic Law defines the legitimate basis for law and morality. The ancient Israelites set the standard against which other ancient civilizations are judged for their failure to believe in the one God. The modern state of Israel points to the fulfillment of biblical prophecies of end times. These central claims developed within evangelicalism.

Cognitive Creationism Compared to Young-Earth Creationism

“Cognitive creationism” is a term for ideologically based rejection of concepts from differential psychology or behavioral genetics. Various authors have compared this practice to young-Earth creationism, but the parallels between the two have not previously been subjected to an in-depth comparison, which is conducted for the first time in this paper. Both views are based on a similar set of psychological needs, and both have developed epistemologically similar worldviews, which draw certain conclusions ahead of time and then interpret all evidence in light of these assumptions. This reversal of the scientific method leads both young-Earth creationists and cognitive creationists to reject large swaths of otherwise well-established research due to its potential to support conclusions they have chosen a priori to reject. Both views also tend to rely on nonparsimonious ad hoc explanations, which are usually not able to reliably predict any future results. The risks posed by cognitive creationism will be discussed, along with potential implications for science education.

Demanding a Verdict: Science and the Apologetics of Biblical Literalism

For many Americans, fundamentalist Christianity is associated with movements to promote biblical literalism and its key tenet, young-earth creationism. Fundamentalism has, for this and other reasons, garnered a widespread reputation for anti-intellectualism in America. However, an effort has been made within certain fundamentalist and evangelical groups to support literalist beliefs with rhetoric and data that imitate scientific discourse. This paper examines examples of science writing from three sources within popcultural apologetics: the bestselling book Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World; the fundamentalist apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, and the evangelical parachurch organisation known as the Institute for Creation Research.

Revisiting the Scopes Trial: Young-Earth Creationism, Creation Science, and the Evangelical Denial of Climate Change

In the century since the Scopes Trial, one of the most influential dogmas to shape American evangelicalism has been that of young-earth creationism. This article explains why, with its arm of “creation science,” young-earth creationism is a significant factor in evangelicals’ widespread denial of anthropogenic climate change. Young-earth creationism has become closely intertwined with doctrines such as the Bible’s divine authority and the Imago Dei, as well as with social issues such as abortion and euthanasia. Addressing this aspect of the environmental crisis among evangelicals will require a re-orientation of biblical authority so as to approach social issues through a hermeneutic that is able to acknowledge the reality and imminent threat of climate change.

Touring Creation Museums, Featuring Dinosaurs in Eden, Philandering Aliens, and the Flood That Changed Molecular Reality!

This chapter describes creation museums as alternative natural history museums that replace evolutionary theory with young-earth creationism, which holds, first, that Genesis 1 depicts God creating the earth and all life forms less than ten thousand years ago, and, second, that Noah’s catastrophic worldwide flood (Genesis 6–9) established the earth’s present topology and fossil record approximately four thousand years ago. Creation museums claim to interpret the Bible as literal history and contend that a careful study of flood geology will prove the truth of the Bible. An examination of the Ark Encounter, the spectacular creation museum of Answers in Genesis, reveals that the exhibits routinely supersede scripture with the wholesale fabrication of historical information. For young-earth creationists, nevertheless, the museum simply feels true and functions as a pilgrimage site.

Flat-Smacked! Converting to Flat Eartherism

The Flat Earth movement appears to have emerged from a combination of Biblical literalism (e.g., young Earth creationism, geocentricism) and conspiracy theorizing (e.g., belief that NASA faked the moon landings). Interviews with participants of the first International Flat Earth Conference in 2017 revealed that the majority of Flat Earthers have come to endorse Flat Earth ideas only within the last few years after watching videos on YouTube. However, the novelty of the movement means that there is a lack of literature on this group, including what exactly convinced these new Flat Earthers and how that conversion took place. Here, we provide evidence for a gradual process of conversion after multiple exposures to Flat Earth YouTube videos to which viewers were initially skeptical but report failing to adequately debunk. Furthermore, evidence is presented here regarding the crucial role YouTube played in their conversion process, suggesting the platform is potentially a strong avenue for changing beliefs. The narratives provided here also support much of the research on conversion, describing a gradual process of deep personal change, via the relatively new mechanism of social media, where one finds a new center of concern, interest, and behavior, as well as a different view of reality.

Wat heeft Dordrecht met Katowice te maken? Gereformeerde theologie en klimaatverandering

What Does Dordrecht Have to Do With Katowice? Reformed Theology and the Problem of Climate Change Reformed Christians who deny or qualify the contemporary climate change (most probably caused by humanity) and its many baneful consequences often do so with an appeal to God’s predetermination and unceasing sustenance of the world’s climate. This essay discerns three theological lines of argument in favour of this position and briefly explores their connections with young earth creationism. Next, the essay critically assesses this appeal to God’s sovereign government in the light of a careful reading of the Canons of Dordt. It is argued that the doctrine of predestination is abused when it is invoked to downplay human responsibility. Sloth and indifference with regard to contemporary climate change are ecological sins; it belongs to the effects of God’s election that we start to hate and combat such sins.

The Bible and Creationism

Biblical creationism emerged in the late nineteenth century among conservative Protestants who were unable to square a plain, commonsensical, “literal” reading of the Bible with Charles Darwin’s theory of organic evolution. As this chapter details, over time a variety of increasingly literal “creationisms” have emerged. For the first century after Origin of Species (1859), old Earth creationism—which accepted mainstream geology—held sway. But with the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood—Noah’s flood explains the geological strata—young Earth creationism took center stage. Waiting in the wings, however, is a geocentric creationism that rejects mainstream biology, geology, and cosmology.