The Word "Creationism" In-depth
The story of creationism has been taught for centuries even thousands of years before us. Mostly everyone claims to know the story behind creationism. But do they know the history of the term used to describe God’s forming of the earth and all things in it? Perhaps to understand the belief of creationism one must first understand the meaning of the word itself.
The word creationism has been used in the English language for about one century and a quarter, since 1880 (Creation). Creationism originates from the word creacioun in the Middle English language. The dictionary definition of the word creationism is, “The belief that
the universe and living organisms originate from divine creation as in the biblical account rather than by process.” This excerpt from the English Mariam Webster Dictionary proceeds to define creationism as the opposite of evolution. Evolution is based on coincidence while creationism is based on process. Process is a series of steps that conclude in a final product. This is what God is said to have done in the creation of the world. This process took a period of six days while in the seventh day God rested. On the first day of God’s creation he
created light and darkness. On the second day he crated earth’s atmosphere. The third day God created the ocean and the land as well as all vegetation. On the fourth day he formed the sun, moon and the stars. This is why some people believe that the seven days of creation are a literal amount of time because plants couldn’t have survived thousands of years without sunlight. On the fifth day God created all creatures of the sky and all creatures of the ocean like birds and fish. On the sixth day God created all animals of the land such as lions, giraffes, and cattle (William, Rowan). He also created man to his image, he created Adam out of dirt and he gave him life with a single breath. Finally,
on the seventh day he rested.
Evidently, this process comes from the Hebrew Bible, specifically from the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. The main point of this definition is that the world and all things in it were created by one divine entity, the Abrahamic God (Creation). Why is God called the Abrahamic God? In the beginning chapters of the book of Genesis the story of Abraham is brought up. Abraham is the beginning of the plan that God had for earth.
After God created Adam and Eve, they committed sin thus, betraying God for Satan in the form of a serpent. Because of sin the first murder in the history of earth came to be. Adam and Eve had two sons Cain and Able. In Cain, jealousy against his brother Able began to grow. Because of this, Cain murdered his own brother and ran away. God gave Adam and Eve another son named Seth as a sign of a new beginning. Seth’s name means “the appointed one”.God said that from Seth would come his chosen people. From Seth came Noah, from the story of Noah’s ark where God punished the world with a huge flood that killed all evil people on earth except for eight survivors which were Noah and his family. From Noah’s son Shem descended a man named Abraham, after nine generations (Creation). Abraham means “Exalted father”, he was the chosen one from God for being a pure, honest and a faithful man to him. God promised Abraham that he would send the savior of the world, the messiah. He would send the messiah trough him and his nation would be the chosen nation that would be the witness of God unto the rest of the world. God also made an unconditional promise unto Abraham saying that he would bless him materially and spiritually. He said that he would make of his descendants a nation blessed by him and that he would bless whoever blessed his nation and he would curse who ever cursed his nation. God later did bring the Messiah into Abraham’s decadence, since Virgin Mary came from Abrahams blessed nation (Creation). She was the mother of the Messiah, Jesus, and she was blessed. Because of this many religions that believe in the birth of the savior, Jesus, are considered Abrahamic religions which are where the term Abrahamic God comes from and where eventually the word creationism descends from.
The word “creationism” could be interpreted in many different ways. In depth the word can have a whole new meaning than when it is in its simple literal form. Unfortunately, until this day people cannot agree on whether or not this concept is true and perhaps they will never have that certainty, only faith can provide that confidence.
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