The History of Young earth creationism
From EvoWiki
The History of Young Earth Creationism
The belief in the earth being thousands of years old once were embraced by some church theologians, philosophers, and historians over the centuries as a matter of personal opinion, not fact or dogma. According to the young earth creationism wikipedia article as well as here, it is claimed that Abraham ibn Ezra (c. 1089–1164) was allegedly the first person who invented the concept of a so-called "young earth". However, This person was a Jewish rabbi along with astrologer, philosopher, and physician who lived during the time when science as we know it were completely unknown. His writings has zero to do with both geology and paleontology. It is even claimed that Jewish Historian Josephus (c. 37 – c. 100) also embraced the young earth belief. However, he too lived during the time when science as we know it were completely unknown as well. Obviously, both men probably embraced this as a matter of personal opinion, not established dogma.
Not every church father embraced the young earth view, though. Some questioned, even rejected the young earth dogma altogether, including Saint Augustine who became one of the first Church leaders to question the authenticity of the Genesis account of creation and the Flood. In fact, no one, not even ibn Ezra and Josephus, knew for sure how old the Earth was back then. Their guess about the planet's age and how long a day was when God created the universe (which, in some cases, is based on a Bible verse in II Peter that refers to the day of the Lord being like a thousand years) is about as good as it can get. In recent years however, during the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists, Christian and Non-christians alike, began to uncover evidence that points to the planet being much, much older than thousands of years. This scientific evidence, they discovered, points to the age of the planet being billions of years old. Thus, giving the people the true age of the earth that is far, far older than anyone can ever imagined.
However, according to Ronald L. Numbers' book The Creationists (University of California Press, 1993), a religious cult, known as the Seventh day Adventist, advertently spawned the YE dogmatic cult (even Henry Morris (1918-2006), the so-called "father of the modern creationism movement" as mentioned below has acknowledged this) in response to Charles Darwin's so-called "dangerous idea" as told in his book, On The Origins of Species Through Natural Selection, published in 1859. While Christians observe the Sabbath Day as a day of worship on Sunday, this religious sect observes their Sabbath on Saturday in honor of the Creation Week which occurred as told in Genesis 1 of the Bible in a six day, 24 hour time period according to their interpretations of it. When they heard about Charles Darwin's revolutionary new idea that theorized that all life evolves through Natural Selection, they became troubled by it. This new teaching did not fit into their religious preconceptions. But then, their mistress and founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, Ellen G. White, (1827-1915) a self-proclaimed prophetess and a cult leader, claimed, one day in 1864, in one of her writings, that she allegedly had seen a vision from God who showed her how He created the universe and the earth in a 6 day-24 hour period, and that the fossils were all the result of plants and animals that had perished during the Great Flood of Noah. To her disciples, this alleged vision solved the whole problem and they began to take her visions and her teachings to heart.
One of Ellen's disciples, George McCready Price (1870-1963) became so hooked on this idea that he began to endorse it and distribute magazines about this new form of creationism to many people in order to win converts. Then in 1923, Price published a book called The New Geology which told his ideas about Earth being 6,000 years old, created in 6 literal 24 hour day periods, and which was later covered with the great flood of Noah, which destroyed everything and turned all of the plants and animals into fossils. This concept is highly based on the writings of Archbishop James Ussher, who concluded by adding the geneologies and the historical dates of the Bible and other Major events that happend after the Biblical events leading up to Ussher's time, that the earth was created in 4004 BC on Sunday, October 23.
Scientists and other people, who knew better than to believe in these faulty teachings gave them little credence and just simply laugh it all off. But the Christian fundamentalists trusted these flawed thoughts and took them to heart. One of them was a civil engineer named Henry Morris who became one of Price's most loyal disciples. He liked his teachings so much that in 1960 he paired up with another YEC advocate named John Whitcomb to write and publish The Genesis Flood that created a sensation among many fundamentalist Christian groups and started the modern creationism movement that continues to this very day. Over the years, many organizations sprang up to advocate this questionable and unsupportable dogma, such as the Institute for Creation Research founded by Henry Morris, 'Answers' in Genesis founded by Ken Ham, and Creation Science Evangelism founded by the self-proclaimed "Dr. Dino" himself, Kent Hovind, just to name a few.
What these organizations advocate is a threat to intelligence as well as the Christian Faith. Known to give many a hapless Christian a false notion that says all of science, especially Evolutionary Biology, is nothing but lies concocted by Satan that were disseminated through his earthly proxy, Charles Darwin, that all those who support evolution are in league with the Devil, and the YEC's own interpretations of the Bible are the interpretation representative of Christianity that is 100% historically true, literal, and accurate, while it's not. Many a hapless Christian accept this dogma not realizing that this is not a Christian representation, but is actually a malignant way of thinking, in that malicious deception and gossip are promoted and perpetuated in God's name, and that all those who would oppose or even disagree with such thinking are to be slandered. This is not the worst of it. YECs are indoctrinating people, especially children, into giving in to all sorts of idiotic claims that says that the Earth is 6,000 years old (meaning it was created in c4000 BC/BCE at the time of the Egyptian Predynastic Period and the building of Stonehenge to name a few of the events that took place about 6,000 years ago during the alleged time of Creation.), the earth was once entirely covered with the Great flood of Noah 4,500 years ago in 2495 BC/BCE (at the same time as the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt in Giza as well as other events.), evolution is to be blamed for all the world's evils, there are no transitional (in between) forms (either living and dead), scientists are involved in a satanic, secret conspiracy, Dating Methods cannot be trusted, light speed is slowing down, blah, blah, blah, and so on. They demand their followers believe all of this to be true or else they will burn in Hell for eternity. This is senseless nonsense, especially from a true Christian viewpoint. None of what they teach is Biblically supported.
Reference:
Ronald L. Numbers The Creationists University of California Press 1993
Seventh Day Adventist Believe in Young Earth
