Scientific Creationism may rely upon the Bible as the central organizing text of creationist beliefs, but they do not in practice try to make their arguments from the entire Bible. They may rely upon passages from many of its various books, but the fact of the matter is that they focus almost exclusively upon three key stories from the Book of Genesis.
Creationism & Creation
The most obvious, but not always the most important, is the story of creation itself. Young Earth Creationists believe that all life was created in six days, exactly as described. They believe that humans began with the creation of Adam and Eve, both of whom were placed in charge of the world of animals and plants in the Garden of Eden. At this point in time there was no death, no decay, and no suffering.
Creationism & The Fall
The second pillar of Scientific Creationism is the story of the Fall. Death, decay and suffering entered the world due to the sin of Adam and Eve, thus accounting for all of the differences between our world and that described as existing immediately after Creation. Indeed, the appearance of sin in the world actually caused changes in the laws of nature, providing for the origin of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, according to which all processes tend to decay and deteriorate.
Creationism & The Flood
The third and final pillar of Scientific Creationism is the story of Noah’s Flood. This story often plays a much more important role than does the creation story, because it is here that creationists think that they can actually accomplish something scientific: explain the evidence at hand. According to Scientific Creationists, the current geologic record is a result of Noah’s Flood rather than billions of years of change.
The Flood was not a localized event like many Old Earth Creationists believe, or a literary device like many Theistic Evolutionists believe. According to Creation Science it was, rather, an actual event in which even the highest mountains around the entire Earth were completely covered with water. The scientific efforts of creationists, then, are focused upon trying to show how such a flood could produce the geologic data we have.
Creationism, the Bible, and Science
Sometimes, because the insistence on a young earth is important to the Creation Science position, creationists will not only oppose the teaching of evolution in school but anything else which postulates an old earth and an old universe — this will include Big Bang cosmology and even some aspects of geology.
Also, in order to explain why things look so much older than is explainable based upon a literalist reading of Genesis, Young Earth Creationists will sometimes argue that the universe and the planet Earth were created with the appearance of great age. This argument can be traced back to the writings of Philip Henry Gosse in the mid 19th century.
A closely related argument suggests that the universe was not created old because that would imply that God is deceptive; instead, the appearance of age and dinosaur bones is attributed to the actions of Satan, who is trying to lead us astray. Of course, this leads to a contradiction: if the earth really is young but made to “look old,” that means that it must in fact “look old.” But many Young Earth Creationists argue that evidence from nature proves that the Earth is not old — which is the same as saying that it does not look old.
Lance F. contributed information for this.
