According to creationism, God started from nothing to create the universe.
The notion of creationism , in the field of theology , refers to the doctrine that maintains that God created the universe from nothing , in addition to having intervened directly in the creation of the human soul to differentiate us from the rest of beings. alive.
According to creationism, everything starts from God . Since God is eternal , the position of creationism implies certain philosophical dilemmas: What was there before the world? How do you create something from nothing?
Creationism, metaphysics and the theory of evolution
There is a metaphysical principle that indicates that “nothing arises from nothing.” If the universe , which encompasses everything that exists, had an origin, it would have emerged precisely from nothing, contradicting the aforementioned principle. To overcome this contradiction, we would have to accept that the universe has always existed. For creationism, this existence is given by God, who is eternal and has always existed.
It is often stated that creationism opposes the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin . This scientist explained that species, including humans , are derived from others. This would mean, therefore, that God did not create man from nothing. For creationists, however, each species is the fruit of an act of divine creation.
Proponents of creationism take the content of Genesis literally.
Genesis and science
The idea of creationism, in short, is used to refer to any act of creation carried out by a divinity. Creationists usually take Genesis (first book of the Bible ) literally and do not accept the existence of an evolution of species. Creationism also contradicts science's dating of the Earth.
Some Christian creationists claim that our planet is young, so young that it is not even 10,000 years old ; More specifically, they usually point out that it was created by the god Yahweh 6,000 years ago, as described in the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar . In other words, this ideology does not take into account the scientifically based theories of the emergence of the universe and the Earth.
Creationism today
Many Protestant churches in North America support the young Earth vision: in statistical figures, it is estimated that this is the theory respected by approximately 47% of Americans, and about 10% of Christian universities teach it in their classrooms. Some Christian organizations, such as the Creation Research Institute and the Creation Research Society, also believe in this ideology .
To find the aforementioned age of our planet, which does not exceed six thousand years, the followers of this branch of creationism rely on deductions and calculations based on the ages of the characters in the Bible, as mentioned in Genesis and other books.
Variants of the movement
Young Earth creationism is divided into three views:
* the one who categorically rejects the theory of the evolution of species, as well as any indication of the evolution of the planet Earth, according to geology studies. This is the most common form of the ideology;
* the one subtitled "ambiguous", which contemplates the possibility that all living beings except human beings have evolved;
* the so-called "rapid evolution", according to which the god Yahweh carried out creation in a few days, so that evolution did take place but it occurred in just one week.
In the field of literature , finally, creationism is the name of a poetic movement that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century , postulating the absolute autonomy of the poem. According to this movement, the poem does not reflect the appearance of nature, but rather follows its internal logic and impulses.