A movement among fundamentalist Christians, especially in the United States since the 1970s, that maintains that the world was created by God, either exactly as described in the book of Genesis in the Bible or in some variation of that account allowing for a different time scale. Today’s creationists go one step further they assert that there is convincing scientific evidence in support of this view and press for scientific creationism to be taught in public schools alongside or in place of evolution. For creationists, evolution by means of natural selection is either false or mere speculation that is, unsupported by the scientific evidence.
The idea that the world was created by a divine being by hat has a long history in the intellectual community. Many thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries accepted the idea that the world had been created in the fairly recent past. In his scholarly work, Annales veteris testament, a prima mundi origine deducti (Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origin of the world), in 1653, James Ussher the archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, dated the creation as taking place on October 23, 4004 B.C.E., at 12.00 noon. His dating was done by very carefully and painstakingly plodding through the Old Testament record and, when that failed, by cross-referencing to other historical records of antiquity. Ussher’s choice of the date 4004 B.C.E. derived from comparison of calendars; finally, he assumed that the creation of light must have occurred at midday. Ussher’s whole work was meticulously researched, using the best information then available and commanded the respect of his contemporaries.