What’s Old Earth Creationism?

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Old Earth creationism (OEC) refers to different types of creationist beliefs with the common thread that they all agree with science about the age of the planet (4.6 billion years rather than 8,000-12,000) but believe that God initially created the universe. Old Earth creationism is an umbrella term for several types of creationism, including Gap creationism, progressive creationism, daytime creationism, and theistic evolution. The growing popularity of Old Earth Creationism and the corresponding decline of Young Earth Creationism in recent centuries can be attributed to scientific knowledge, including the discovery of fossils, radiocarbon dating, ice cores, geological evidence of ice ages, speed measurement of light, and many others. Today, many Christians and Jews believe in Old Earth creationism.

For thousands of years after the Bible was written, most Christians, Jews, and Muslims believed in young earth creationism, that the Earth was created some 8,000 years ago. This was measured using genealogies and ages recorded in the Bible and by estimating the length of time between Adam and more contemporary figures whose birth and death dates are known. Young Earth Creationists believe that the world was created by God in six literal 24-hour days, during which time the Earth and everything upon it, including the ancestors of all currently living plants and animals, were were created out of nothing.

However, young-earth creationism suffered as contradictory scientific knowledge was progressively uncovered, much of which suggested that the Earth was billions of years old instead of about 8,000. This has resulted in changes in the popular interpretation of the Christian creation myth as presented in the book of Genesis. One of the first variants to emerge was Gap creationism, which argues that there was a large gap between Genesis 1:1, the “first creation” (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”) and Genesis 1:2 -31 (“And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light”, etc.) This theory was popularized by Thomas Chalmers, an early 19th century professor of divinity at the University of Edinburgh and founder of the Free Church of Scotland.

Another popular form of Old Earth creationism is daytime creationism, which argues that the “days” in the biblical creation story are metaphorical and that these days may have actually lasted for millions or billions of years. This somehow reconciles Genesis with science. Another variant is progressive creationism, which claims that God created the Earth and life progressively, over billions of years, and that when a new species emerges, it is due to God’s direct intervention. they reject the notion of macroevolution or a universal common ancestor.

Another subvariety of Old Earth creationism is theistic evolution. Theistic evolution is the more “modernist” variety of creationism, which essentially claims that God created the world billions of years ago and uses Darwinian evolution and natural selection as the mechanism by which new species are created.

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