Creationism about fictional entities requires a principle connecting what fictions say exist with which fictional entities really exist. The most natural way of spelling out such a principle yields inconsistent verdicts about how many fictional entities are generated by certain inconsistent fictions. Avoiding inconsistency without compromising the attractions of creationism will not be easy.

In this paper, I defend fictional creationism, the view that fictional objects are abstract artifacts, from the objection that the apparent truth of fictional negative existentials, such as “Sherlock Holmes does not exist,” poses a serious problem for creationism. I develop a sophisticated version of the pragmatic approach by focusing on the inconsistent referential intentions of ordinary speakers: the upshot would be that creationism is no worse —perhaps even in a better position— than anti-realism, even if we (...) restrict our linguistic data to fictional negative existentials. (shrink)

As the crusade to outlaw the teaching of evolution changed to a battle for equal time for creationism, the ideological defenses of that doctrine also shifted from primarily biblical to more scientific grounds. This essay describes the historical development of “scientific creationism” from a variety of late–nineteenth– and early–twentieth–century creationist reactions to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, through the Scopes trial and the 1960s revival of creationism, to the current spread of strict creationism around the world.

Phillip Johnson claims that Creationism is a better explanation of the existence and characteristics of biological species than is evolutionary theory. He argues that the only reason biologists do not recognize that Creationist's negative arguments against Darwinism have proven this is that they are wedded to a biased ideological philosophy —Naturalism — which dogmatically denies the possibility of an intervening creative god. However,Johnson fails to distinguish Ontological Naturalism from Methodological Naturalism. Science makes use of the latter and I show (...) how it is not dogmatic but follows from sound requirements for empirical evidential testing. Furthermore, Johnson has no serious alternative type of positive evidence to offer for Creationism, and purely negative argumentation, despite his attempt to legitimate it, will not suffice. (shrink)

This essay explains why creationism about fictional characters is an abject failure. Creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional objects are created by the authors of the novels in which they first appear. This essay shows that, when the details of creationism are filled in, the hypothesis becomes far more puzzling than the linguistic data it is used to explain. No matter how the creationist identifies where, when and how fictional objects are created, the proposal (...) conflicts with other strong intuitions we have about fictional characters. (shrink)

Abstract creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional characters are abstract objects that authors create. I defend this view against criticisms from Stuart Brock that hitherto have not been adequately countered. The discussion sheds light on how the number of fictional characters depends on authorial intention. I conclude also that we should change how we think intentions are connected to artifacts more generally, both abstract and concrete.

Creationism with respect to fictional entities, i.e., the position according to which ficta are creations of human practices, has recently become the most popular realist account of fictional entities. For it allows one to hold that there are fictional entities while simultaneously giving such entities a respectable metaphysical status, that of abstract artifacts. In this paper, I will draw what are the ontological and semantical consequences of this position, or at least of all its forms that are genuinely creationist. (...) For some people, these consequences will sound as plagues against the position; for some others, especially realists on ficta, they are welcome results. Although I hold that all forms of genuine creationism have these consequences, I will conclude by explaining why I take moderate creationism, according to which ficta are created by means of a reflexive stance on the make-believe practice grounding them, to be the best of these forms. (shrink)

The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics? Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of design or accident. In this book, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Versions of what we call the (...) "creationist" option were widely favored by the major thinkers of classical antiquity, including Plato, whose ideas on the subject prepared the ground for Aristotle's celebrated teleology. But Aristotle aligned himself with the anti-creationist lobby, whose most militant members—the atomists—sought to show how a world just like ours would form inevitably by sheer accident, given only the infinity of space and matter. This stimulating study explores seven major thinkers and philosophical movements enmeshed in the debate: Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, the atomists, Aristotle, and the Stoics. (shrink)

Key Words creation science, evolution education s Abstract Creationism, the rejection of evolution in favor of supernatural design, comes in many varieties besides the common young-earth Genesis version. Creationist attacks on science education have been evolving in the last few years through the alliance of different varieties. Instead of calls to teach “creation science,” one now finds lobbying for “intelligent design” (ID). Guided by the Discovery Institute’s “Wedge strategy,” the ID movement aims to overturn evolution and what it sees (...) as a pernicious materialist worldview and to renew a theistic foundation to Western culture, in which human beings are recognized as being created in the image of God. Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, “irreducible complexity,” “complex specified information,” and “icons of evolution,” have been thoroughly examined and refuted. Nevertheless, from Kansas to Ohio to the U.S. Congress, ID continues lobbying to teach the controversy, and scientists need to be ready to defend good evolution education. (shrink)

The research is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of spiritual culture of Modern times - creationism. Authors analyze the causes of creationist teachings, as well as develop a classification of forms of creationism. As such, the following are distinguished and analyzed: biblical creationism, scientific creationism, theological evolutionism, teleological creationism, alterism, missionary creationism. Biblical creationism is a literal understanding of the texts of the Bible relating to the creation of the Earth and (...) man. Scientific creationism is an attempt by individual scientists to combine scientific knowledge with religious beliefs. It gathers scientific evidence in favor of the biblical narrative, and, at the same time, rational arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. On the contrary, theological evolutionism, especially in the form of concordism, tries to reconcile the scientific and religious view of evolution. This is achieved through the interpretation of Biblical symbols through modern scientific concepts, or by the creation of a new pseudo-religion (for example, Teilhardism). Teleological creationism, in the modern form of Intelligent Design theory, popular in Western Protestantism, using the data of natural sciences, criticizes the foundations of the theory of biological evolution, thus demonstrating the gap of natural causality in order to justify the supernatural purposefulness of the Universe. Alterism asserts that the very nature of the world before original sin was different, therefore, the current knowledge of nature cannot correspond to the original plan of God reflected in the Bible. For the first time, highlighted and explored in this work, missionary creationism seeks to interpret the Bible from the point of view of concepts of modern science in order to bring a person with an already formed scientific picture of the world to faith. It is shown that most of the above forms demonstrate a pseudoscientific or pseudo-religious essence. The authors make an assumption about the origins of creationist teachings rooted in the introduction of elements of Neoplatonic philosophy into Christian teaching. The seeming contradiction between science and religion in understanding the evolution of nature finds its explanation through the disclosure of creationism's claim to understand the world as a "thing in itself". (shrink)

Antievolution arguments of Christian and Hindu creationists often critique Darwin's metaphor of the geological record as an ill‐preserved book of life, while highlighting the problem of anomalous fossils. For instance, Bible‐based young‐Earth creationists point to anomalous humanlike prints alongside authenticated dinosaur tracks to argue for the creation of all life some few thousand years ago. But Vedic‐based ancient‐hominid creationists view the same sort of evidence as indicating the existence of all species, including the hominids, billions of years ago. I examine (...) the roots of this Hindu Vedic creationism and its recent elaboration among scientifically minded members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Similarities in the methods and rhetorical strategies of the two creationist groups are considered, as well as the underlying motives that have brought together such otherwise disparate religious worldviews. (shrink)

An anthology of writings by proponents and critics of intelligent design creationism.

Ewolucjonizm–kreacjonizm. Otwarta debata / Evolutionism–Creationism: An Open Debate.

Most debates surrounding the teaching of creationism in the science classroom have been addressed under a standard frame: whether creationism is science or religion. As creationism suggests supernatural causation, it has been understood as beyond the purview of science, and therefore as religion. This argument for methodological naturalism has been increasingly challenged by philosophers of science as a demarcation criterion. The disaggregation approach introduced by Cecile Laborde provides an alternative framework to address this debate. It suggests that (...) the problem with creationism lies in its epistemic inaccessibility, as it is a theory with weak explanatory capacity that has been superseded by Darwinian evolution. Thus, the exclusion of creationism from the science classroom is not grounded in its religious character, but rather in a set of epistemic shortcomings, which are shared by other fully secular pseudoscientific theories. In the same way that religion is not special as a legal-political category under Laborde’s analysis, creationism in the curriculum should not be treated as special either. (shrink)

Creationism is usually paired these days with evolution, as in “The Creation vs. Evolution Debate.” Although there is something right about that, it is not the whole story. The controversy is older than Darwin and touches on far more than biological evolution. In this chapter, we consider broader questions about the origin of the universe and the relation between science and Scripture: How old is the universe? If God created it, how did he do so? How should we interpret (...) the account of creation in the early chapters of Genesis? There are four main approaches to these questions. The first is naturalism: nothing exists beyond the realm of nature, material objects, and energy. Most naturalists consider religious beliefs to be purely matters of faith, making no contribution to history or science. Although naturalism and atheism are not synonymous, when it comes to matters of religion, they are essentially the same. The second view is young earth creationism (YEC), which takes a literal interpretation of Genesis and the six days of creation. The last two views, progressive creationism (PC) and theistic evolution (TE), reject this interpretation and agree with contemporary science about the age of the universe. The difference between PC and TE has to do with God’s activities after the initial creation of the cosmos. Although there are nonchristian theists in each camp, the debate is a much larger, defining issue among contemporary, Protestant Christians than it is in other religions. (shrink)

Why creationism is an important cultural, but scientifically negligible, phenomenon.

Social groups seem to be entities that are dependent on us. Given their apparent dependence, one might adopt Social Creationism—the thesis that all social groups are social objects created through (some specific types of) thoughts, intentions, agreements, habits, patterns of interaction, and practices. Here I argue that not all social groups come to be in the same way. This is due, in part, to social groups failing to share a uniform nature. I argue that some groups (e.g., racial and (...) gender groups) are social kinds. They either falsify Social Creationism or are created as mere byproducts of property instantiation. In contrast, I argue that other groups (e.g., teams and committees) are social objects. When restricted to groups like these, Social Creationism holds. The conclusions have more than just metaphysical import. The differences between groups and how they come to be help to explain why some groups appear to be natural, why some fail to rely on intentions, and why certain sorts of groups are widespread and persistent. (shrink)

Ewolucjonizm–kreacjonizm. Poszukiwanie płaszczyzny dialogu W artykule przedstawiona została próba wskazania płaszczyzny dyskusji ewolucjonistów z kreacjonistami, która umożliwiałaby dialog zwiększający szansę wypracowania spójnego światopoglądu łączącego elementy wiedzy naukowej i wiary religijnej. W odniesieniu do różnych typów wiedzy zaproponowane zostało wyróżnienie trzech poziomów: 1) przedmiot badań, 2) wiedza o tym przedmiocie, 3) interpretacja tej wiedzy. Dialog może być prowadzony już na poziomie drugim, lecz z poszanowaniem wzajemnej autonomii i ukierunkowaniem raczej na inspirację, niż na integrację. Właściwą płaszczyzną dialogu jest poziom trzeci: interpretacja (...) wiedzy oraz budowanie wizji świata i człowieka. Celem dialogu na tym poziomie jest integracja wszystkich elementów światopoglądu i dążenie do wyjaśnienia i zrozumienia całej rzeczywistości. (shrink)

I consider what it might mean to teach creationism and offer a variety of educational, legal, religious, and philosophical arguments for why it is improper to teach it in public school science classes and possibly elsewhere as well. I rebut the standard creationist arguments for inclusion. I also rebut Rawlsian arguments offered by philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga.

Amie Thomasson is well known both for defending Creationism about fictional characters (see her 1999, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2015a, and 2016) and for endorsing easy ontology (2015b). My aim in this chapter is to argue that there’s a tension between these two views. Creationism commits one to the existence of fictional characters (as abstract objects). Easy ontology commits one to the existence of abundant properties. I will argue that anyone who endorses both the existence of fictional characters and (...) property abundance is committed to an indeterminacy which violates classical logic. Since Creationists, including Thomasson, take Creationism to respect classical logic this is a surprising discovery (Thomasson 1999, van Inwagen 1977). If correct, my argument shows Thomasson must either (i) give up the property abundance which follows naturally from easy ontology, (ii) give up Creationism, or (iii) restrict classical logic. (shrink)

Creationists have acquired a more sophisticated intellectual arsenal. This book reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it once was taken to be. Its new advocates have become more sophisticated in how they present their views, speaking of "intelligent design" rather than "creation science" and aiming their arguments against the naturalistic philosophical method that underlies science, proposing to replace it with a "theistic science." The creationism controversy is not just about the status (...) of Darwinian evolution—it is a clash of religious and philosophical worldviews, for a common underlying fear among Creationists is that evolution undermines both the basis of morality as they understand it and the possibility of purpose in life. In Tower of Babel, philosopher Robert T. Pennock compares the views of the new creationists with those of the old and reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. One of Pennock's major innovations is to turn from biological evolution to the less charged subject of linguistic evolution, which has strong theoretical parallels with biological evolution, both in content and in the sort of evidence scientists use to draw conclusions about origins. Of course, an evolutionary view of language does conflict with the Bible, which says that God created the variety of languages at one time as punishment for the Tower of Babel. Several chapters deal with the work of Phillip Johnson, a highly influential leader of the new Creationists. Against his and other views, Pennock explains how science uses naturalism and discusses the relationship between factual and moral issues in the creationism-evolution controversy. The book also includes a discussion of Darwin's own shift from creationist to evolutionist and an extended argument for keeping private religious beliefs separate from public scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Originally published in 1995 this is the fifth volume in the series Creationism in 20th Century America. It re-publishes After Its Kind - a critique on theories of biological evolution and a defense of the biblical account of creation which Nelson wrote when he was a Pastor in New Jersey where he also attended classes in genetics and zoology at Rutgers university. His 1931 volume The Deluge Story in Stone: A History of the Flood Theory of Geology, also reprinted (...) here was continuously in print until the 1960s. As his scientific and theological correspondence expanded in the wake of his publications, Nelson became further involved in the 'evolution debates'. During the late 1930s his writings concentrated on early man and the glacial phenomena he saw all about him in Wisconsin and he compiled the materials he thought necessary to relate Scripture to the evidence of human antiquity. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to show that a reasonable thesis on truth in fiction, Fictional Vichianism (FV)—according to which fictional truths are true because they are stipulated to be true—can be positively endorsed if one grounds Kripke’s justification for (FV), that traces back to the idea that names used in fiction never refer to concrete real individuals, into a creationist position on fictional entities that allows for a distinction between the pretending and the characterizing use of fiction-involving sentences. Thus, (...) sticking to (FV) provides a reason for a metaphysically moderate ontological realism on fictional entities. (shrink)

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional individual. So is his favorite pipe. Our pre-theoretical intuition says that neither of them is real. It says that neither of them really, or actually, exists. It also says that there is a sense in which they do exist, namely, a sense in which they exist “in the world of” the Sherlock Holmes stories. Our pre-theoretical intuition says in general of any fictional individual that it does not actually exist but exists “in the world of” (...) the relevant fiction. I wish to defend this pretheoretical intuition. To do so, I need to defend two claims: that fictional individuals do not actually exist, and that they exist “in the world of” the relevant fiction. The aim of this paper is to defend the first claim. (shrink)

Forrest and Gross expose the scientific failure, the religious essence, and the political ambitions of "intelligent design" creationism. They examine the movement's "Wedge Strategy," which has advanced and is succeeding through public relations rather than through scientific research. Analyzing the content and character of "intelligent design theory," they highlight its threat to public education and to the separation of church and state.

Recent events indicate that creationists are becoming increasingly active in the Netherlands. This article offers an overview of these events. First, I discuss the introduction of intelligent-design (ID) creationism into the Dutch public sphere by a renowned physicist, Cees Dekker. Later, Dekker himself shifted toward a more evolution-friendly position, theistic evolution. Second, we see how Dekker was followed in this shift by Andries Knevel, an important figure within the Dutch evangelical broadcasting group, the Evangelische Omroep (EO). His conversion to (...) ID, and subsequently to theistic evolution, brought him into conflict with young-Earth creationists who still strongly identify themselves with the EO. Third, provoked by the dissidence of prominent orthodox believers and the celebrations surrounding the Darwin year, young-Earth creationists became very visible. After three decades of relative silence, they started a project to make sure that the Dutch people would hear of the “alternatives” to evolutionary theory. This article (1) adds to the growing number of reports on creationists' increased activity in Europe and (2) suggests that ID, in a context different from the United States, did not unite but rather divided the Dutch orthodox Protestant community. (shrink)

Repeatable artworks like musical works have presented theorists in the ontology of art with a puzzle. They seem in some respects like eternal, immutable objects and in others like created, historical objects. Creationists have embraced the latter appearances and attempted to compel Platonists to follow them. I examine in detail each argument in a cumulative case for Creationism, showing how the Platonist can respond. The conclusion is that the debate between Platonists and Creationists is a stalemate. In order for (...) progress to be made in the first-order debate, second-order progress on the metaontology of art needs to come first. (shrink)

Creationism is usually regarded as an irrational set of beliefs. In this paper I propose that the best way to understand why individual learners settle on any mature set of beliefs is to see that as the developmental outcome of a series of “fast and frugal” boundedly rational inferences rather than as a rejection of reason. This applies to those whose views are opposed to science in general. A bounded rationality model of belief choices both serves to explain the (...) fact that folk traditions tend to converge on “anti-modernity”, and to act as a default hypothesis, deviations from which we can use to identify other, arational, influences such as social psychological, economic and individual dispositions. I propose some educational and public policy strategies that might decrease the proportion of learners who find creationism and anti-science in general a rational choice. (shrink)

Metafizyczny kreacjonizm a paradoksy teizmu ewolucyjnego: przyczynek do dyskusji w ramach współczesnego tomizmu Autor artykułu dowodzi, że metafizyczny kreacjonizm, z którym spotykamy się w filozofii św. Tomasza z Akwinu, w odróżnieniu od kreacjonizmu amerykańskiego oraz teologiczno-‑biblijnego, jest teorią, która wyrasta z czysto filozoficznego wyjaśnianie początków świata i człowieka. Nie jest zatem ideą biblijną przeniesioną na teren filozofii. Podobnie jak teizm metafizyki Arystotelesa, a także teizm metafizyki św. Tomasza z Akwinu nie jest teizmem religijnym, lecz teizmem czysto filozoficznym, gdyż wyrasta z (...) metafizycznego wyjaśniania rzeczywistości. Kreacjonizm metafizyczny jest ostatecznym wyjaśnieniem źródła istnienia bytów, które dane są nam w doświadczeniu, jako niekonieczne w istnieniu i zmienne. Natomiast kreacjonizm amerykański, jest interpretacja biologiczno-kosmologiczną biblijnej prawdy o stworzeniu świata w określonym przedziale czasowym i w punkcie wyjścia odwołuje się do danych Objawienia, które chce naukowo potwierdzić Artykuł został podzielony na dwie części. W części pierwszej zostały przedstawione węzłowe elementy metafizycznej teorii stworzenia ex nihilo i jej rozumienie. W drugiej zaś części artykułu zostały przywołane elementy teizmu ewolucyjnego, które z punktu metafizycznego kreacjonizmu są źródłem różnych paradoksów, a niekiedy i absurdów oraz domagają się ponownego przemyślenia. (shrink)

On the cultural roots, philosophical issues and science education of various blends of creationism.

The staying power of creationist objections to evolution needs explanation. It depends on the use of “blood” language. Both William Jennings Bryan and, a century later, Ken Ham connect evolution with the blood of predation and the blood of apes, and both also connect evolution with the blood of atonement. Drawing on Mary Douglas and Bettina Bildhauer, I suggest that blood becomes important to societies that image the social body on the human body. Blood reveals the body as porous and (...) vulnerable and therefore needing social work to be constructed as whole and bounded. Blood is the place where society conducts this work. I conclude that blood language is ineliminable from Christian discourse and indeed from discourses that model the social on the individual body. The solution, I suggest, is not to avoid the language of blood, but to continue to use it in ways that broaden its focus from human sin to human and animal suffering. (shrink)

Creationism is an ancient worldview that was incorporated into ancient religious doctrines and survived in the western world due to its domination by religious institution such as the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Slowly, with the development of democratic political systems and science, the church lost its power of dominance over intellectual enterprises, and evolution became accepted by the majority as the inherent process in nature. Nevertheless, creationism is still very much alive among various fundamentalist churches and their organizations (...) in the United States. This article discusses the premises of the creationist movement, its varieties, and confronts it with the basic premises, characteristics, and modus operandi of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

This paper discusses the judgment of Judge William Overton in McLean vs. Arkansas Board of Education (1982), and the subsequent philosophical literature that discusses this judgment.

Until recently, little attention has been paid in the school classroom to creationism and almost none to intelligent design. However, creationism and intelligent design appear to be on the increase and there are indications that there are more countries in which schools are becoming battlegrounds over them. I begin by examining whether creationism and intelligent design are controversial issues, drawing on Robert Dearden’s epistemic criterion of the controversial and more recent responses to and defences of this. I (...) then examine whether the notion of ‘worldviews’ in the context of creationism is a useful one by considering the film March of the Penguins. I conclude that the ‘worldviews’ perspective on creationism is useful for two reasons: first, it indicates the difficulty of using the criterion of reason to decide whether an issue is controversial or not; secondly, it suggests that standard ways of addressing the diversity of student views in a science classroom may be inadequate. I close by examining the implications of this view for teaching in science lessons and elsewhere, for example in religious education lessons and at primary level where subject divisions cannot be made in so clear-cut a manner. (shrink)

Creationism is the conjunction of the following theses: (i) fictional individuals (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) actually exist; (ii) fictional names (e.g., 'Holmes') are at least sometimes genuinely referential; (iii) fictional individuals are the creations of the authors who first wrote (or spoke, etc.) about them. CA Creationism is the conjunction of (i) - (iii) and the following thesis: (iv) fictional individuals are contingently existing abstracta; they are non-concrete artifacts of our world and various other possible worlds. TakashiYagisawa has recently (...) provided a number of arguments designed to show that Creationism is unjustified. I here critically examine three of his challenges to CA Creationism. I argue that each fails to undermine this version of Creationism. (shrink)

The contemporary debate over God and abstract objects is hampered by a lack of conceptual clarity concerning two distinct metaphysical views: absolute creationism and divine conceptualism. This confusion goes back to the fount of the current debate, the article “Absolute Creation” by Thomas Morris and Christopher Menzel, who were not of one mind concerning God’s relation to abstract objects. Confusion has followed in their wake. Going forward, theistic philosophers need to distinguish more clearly between a sort of modified Platonism, (...) according to which abstract objects depend ontologically on God, and a sort of divine psychologism, according to which objects typically thought to be abstract are, in fact, concrete mental entities of some sort. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe an approach to the teaching of philosophy of science that draws normally reluctant students into controversial issues in the philosophy of science. I have found that the topic of creationism is a good vehicle for introducing students to the more difficult issues in philosophy of science. I explore the use of creationism as a case-study in the philosophy of science and detail my own experience in the creationism debate.

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from (...) some archeological files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism. (shrink)