Creationists not what you’ve been led to believe
By Chad Phillips
MTW contributing writer
What is a creationist?
The term creationist embodies much more than the secular and religious fundamentalists want you to know. That’s because, both sides want to exploit the term in order to help drive their particular agenda.
Secular intellectual elites tend to use the term in much the same way biblical literalists do. For both groups, the term “creationist” only applies to those who believe God created the universe and everything in it in six literal 24 hour days by an act of fiat.
But both sides use this narrow definition in very different ways. The enlightened rationalists use it to minimize, marginalize, and therefore, neutralize anyone who would dare question their orthodoxy. The biblical literalists on the other hand use the term to exclude anyone who doesn’t adhere to their view, some even going as far as calling into question a person’s faith. And both sides use the term and the corresponding "ism" that goes along with it as a means of dismissing legitimate arguments they each have to offer.
Whether though ignorance, or deliberate deception I do not know. But there are a lot of folks, on both sides of the debate, who can’t seem to apply the term beyond their own myopic view of just what IT is.
So what is a creationist? A creationist is simply anyone who believes that there is a creator (God) responsible for the physical universe. That’s all.
It makes little difference (denotatively) whether that person believes in a gradual process of “God guided evolution” or “fiat creation.” If the individual believes an ultimate being created the universe with all its complexity, they qualify for creationist status.
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