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Old Earth creationism (OEC) is a form ofcreationism that accepts the existence ofdeep time, and may accept scientific evidence about theage of the Earth. As with all forms of creationism, it maintains that the earth and theuniverse were created by agod, usually theAbrahamicGod (Christianity,Judaism, andIslam).

OECs reinterpretbiblical descriptions of the two differingcreation stories in the book ofGenesis in order to fit real-world facts about theage of the Earth, cosmology, and — in some forms — even the facts ofevolution. As a result, OEC requires adherents to disregardconsiderably less evidence than itsyoung-Earth cousin.

Although its believers frequently do not acceptflood geology, they generally do believe in some form of abiblical flood.

Main divisions[edit]

Old Earth Creationism is harder to define thanYoung Earth Creationism, as believers vary in how far they go in accepting fullbiblical literalism on the one hand andempirical reality on the other. Nevertheless, one can divide the concept into a few general classes. Although some OEC ideas are mutually exclusive, it is possible to mix and match others depending on the believer's grasp ofreality.

Theanswersincreation website carried out a (likely unscientific) poll of Old Earth Creationists which indicated that "45 percent are Progressive Creationists, 32 percent are Theistic Evolutionists, 10 percent believe in the Gap Theory, and the rest are old earth, but undecided as to which position to believe in".^[1]

Day-age creationism[edit]

Progressive creationism[edit]

Progressive creationism suggests that a series of individual biological creation-events took place. Consequently the concept is incompatible with common descent. A number of subdivisions and various combinations are possible:

• In all versions of progressive creationism, the days of creation are assumed to be much longer than 24 hours. In some versions, each day is assumed to be a fixed thousand years. Other versions may assume millions (or billions) of years to pass, and each "day" may not represent the same fixed period of time.
• In some versions, the days are entirely separate periods; in others, the days may overlap with each other.
• In some versions, the chronological one of the two sequences of events as stated in Genesis is held to be true, while others hold more flexible interpretations of the chronology.

Typically, although Progressive Creationists believe in an old earth, they are unable to bring themselves to accept theevidence for evolution bynatural selection. Instead, they believe that each species was the subject of a separate individual creation event —without evolving from a previous species. In order to do this, they have to ignorethe incontrovertible evidence of common descent, as well as the fact that they themselves were grown from a fertilised ovum.

Theistic evolution[edit]

This is similar to long-timescale versions of Progressive Creationism — but now with the added belief in evolution. Thehypothesis of theistic evolution suggests thatGod first createdlife and then:

1. either let evolution run its natural course vianatural selection (in which case it's not clear what is "theistic" about "theistic evolution"; indeed, it might be better described as "deistic evolution")
   or
2. guided evolution to produce humans. (The method of such guidance is not specified, although some adherents claim it could be thepseudoscience ofIntelligent design^[2] — for which no credible evidence has ever been presented.) Another term sometimes used is "scientific creationism".

Gap creationism[edit]

According to gap creationism, a gap of many, many years occurred betweenGenesis 1:1 andGenesis 1:2.

Supernatural processes[edit]

Those who advocate the Gap theory or progressive creationism claim that God did not just perform a single act of creation, but many (even as many as millions) over long periods ofgeological time, each time creating newspecies or highertaxonomic groupings. During the intervals whenGod was not creating,microevolution was taking place, to allow minor adaptations within species. The progressive creationistAlan Hayward (1923–2008) proposed the process of "successive creation" that “God has been at work ever since the universe began, performing a great number of creative acts at intervals”.^[3]

The Gap theorist Arthur Custance (1910–1985) proposed the hypothesis ofsupernatural selection as a process for how new species originate.^[4] Both "successive creation" and "supernatural selection" are supposed to besupernatural replacements for known naturalevolutionary processes. The problem with the supernatural processes of Custance and Hayward is that they are not testable and are really no different than just sayingGod did it.

Intelligent design[edit]

The more scientifically minded believers inintelligent design take on board all ideas about the age of the earth and evencommon descent, but maintain that evolution is controlled and managed by "somebody". The less scientifically minded include — well — less science. There is zero realevidence in support of any of the ID variants.

Noah's Flood[edit]

Beliefs in a biblical flood tend to vary amongst OECs. While some — perhaps especially those who hold to the "Gap Theory" — may maintain that a full global flood occurred, others scoff at the idea and point out its many failings. They prefer to believe in a smaller localized event (or events) and claim that this inspired the various flood stories around the world. Yet others will prefer the pseudoscience ofHydroplate theory.

See also[edit]

• Young earth creationism
• Expelled: Leader's Guide
• Evidence against a recent creation
• Revelation Theory of Creation
• Alan Hayward

References[edit]

• Creationism
• Types of creationism

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