Progressive creationism
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Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts that new species have appeared successively over earth's 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 original and new creations formed outside the realm of naturalistic science. This distinguishes it from theistic evolution which holds that natural evolutionary mechanisms were guided by God. Progressive creation generally rejects naturalistic macroevolution as untenable biologically, and counterindicated historically in the fossil record. By implication, progressive creationism generally rejects the possibility of each species' ancestors having a predecessor, and by implication the concept of universal descendence from a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA or LUA). It incorporates and accepts modern physical science, viewing the Big Bang as evidence of the creative power of God.
Progressive Creationists generally believe that God specially created "kinds" of organisms (genetically unrelated to older kinds) sequentially, thus explaining the order seen in the fossil record, as well as the punctuation between species.
[edit] Historical development
In the early 19th century many such theories were produced by scientists looking to explain developments in geology but opposed to what they saw as atheistic Lamarckian evolution, disreputably associated with the French Revolution and radical democratic agitators, although the term "creationism" would not be coined until the late 19th century. In the early 1830s the geologist and clergyman Sir Charles Lyell set out a gradualist theory in which each species was sequentially produced in its "centre of creation" and was designed for the habitat, but would go extinct when the habitat changed. This view was supported by John Herschel and developed in the direction of Evolutionary creationism by Charles Babbage.
By 1836 the anatomist Richard Owen had theories influenced by Johannes Peter Müller that living matter had an "organising energy", a life-force that directed the growth of tissues and also determined the lifespan of the individual and of the species. In the 1850s Owen developed ideas of "archetypes" in the Divine mind producing a sequence of species in "ordained continuous becoming". Following publication of The Origin of Species Owen became a bitter critic of Darwin, arguing his own "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things" in which new species appeared at birth, not through natural selection.
[edit] Modern progressive creationism
Although many Young-Earth creationists equate progressive creationism with theistic evolution, it is distinct in that God is seen to regularly involve himself in the process of species development through special creative acts . Most notably, most progressive creationists would state that God specially created Adam directly as opposed to breathing life into a sub-human animal.
Proponents of the Progressive creation theory include Millard Erickson, author of the classic text book Christian Theology, and neo-evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm. Astronomer Hugh Ross is another notable progressive creationist. His organization, Reasons To Believe, accepts the scientifically determined age of the Earth but seeks to disprove Darwinian evolution. Answers In Creation also has material promoting progressive creation, though does not preclude either gap creationism or theistic evolution as possibilities.
[edit] External links
- Answers In Creation - Supporting Progressive Creationists by showing the flaws in young earth creationism
- Research and Essays on Evolution and the Bible
- Essays and Biblical Studies on the Big Bang and Evolution
- Reasons To Believe, Pasadena, CA.
- Hugh Ross and ‘progressive creationism’: why is it wrong to add billions of years to the Bible?
- Progressive Creation: An Overview
