What is a Creationist?

1 Background
I made the following statement recently on a religion discussion board…

Fundamentalists and Creationists make the most noise but they don't represent the views of ordinary believers.

…which elicited this response…

"You can't make the most noise if no one is listening. And before we go too far, it depends on what you mean by "noise." Plus, you need a new term other than Creationists. I have no idea what you mean. Are you lumping all believers in God as Creationists? Why not just say believers in God and get it over with?"

Some comments on this response:

• Obviously one can make the most noise if no one is listening - in fact one is bound to make the most noise if no one is listening. If people were listening one would not need to make much noise at all.

• There is no need for a new term other than "Creationist." It's a perfectly valid and established term, although there are different types of Creationist.

• The person making the comment says he has no idea what I mean by "Creationist" - this is particularly odd as he described himself as an Old Earth Creationist and most of his "Christian friends are young earth" and all of his "Bible study friends are young earth."  And also in his own words… "I'm a creationist that believes in the big bang. I used to believe in a young earth but no longer am convinced of that position. However I am open to being proven wrong by young earth creationists." So he seems to have very clear ideas about what is meant by "Creationist" and is happy to use the word.

• He asks if I'm "lumping all believers in God as Creationists" when I've clearly stated the exact opposite - Creationists do not represent the views of ordinary believers, in my opinion.

• He suggests I should "just say believers in God and get it over with" when again, clearly, I'm saying not all believers in God are Creationists.

• The same person has advocated the work of the "Discovery Institutute" and has stated that Intelligent Design is a fact, that irreducible complexity is a "thorn in the side of evolutionary theory", that evolution is the result of "blind forces, operating at random" and natural selection depends on "Chance." These are well known straw men arguments about natural selection which are put forward by Creationists who dispute evolution. 

2 Definitions

Let's first address the points made that relate to definitions, and understand what is meant by the term "Creationist". 

2.1 Oxford English Dictionary

Creationism
1) The belief that the universe and living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation, as in the biblical account, rather than by natural processes such as evolution.

EXAMPLE SENTENCES
The majority of Americans believe in creationism rather than evolution.

They spend much time attacking biblical creationism and creationists.

The original proposal was to stop teaching evolution theory until creationism could be taught alongside.

1.1) Another term for creation science.

2.1.1 Creation Science

The OED explains that Creationism is another term for Creation Science, so let's look at the dictionary definition for that…

The reinterpretation of scientific knowledge in accord with belief in the literal truth of the Bible, especially regarding the origin of matter, life, and humankind.

2.3 Creationist Definition of Creationism

Here is an overview from http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/creationism

In the simplest form, creationism is the belief that some form of intelligence created the universe and all life, as opposed to the universe and life arising without an intelligent cause. Although the age of the earth is often cited as an aspect of creationism, there are numerous schools of thought. In fact, the age of the earth is usually either derived from uniformitarian beliefs (i.e., the present is the key to understanding the past) or the biblical record.

While some creationists (in the strictest sense of the word) claim to believe in an intelligent creator, they refuse to postulate on the identity of this creator. However, most creationists believe that the Creator left both evidence of His work and a record of His activity, which are recorded in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah. This record, which purports to be an eyewitness account and is attested to by the evidence, is the basis for most creationist thought.

There is some disagreement among creationists (particularly between old-earth and young-earth creationists) about the age of the earth. However, a straightforward reading of the text does not support the ancient age many scientists claim (4.5 billion years) and is only necessary for those wanting to insert popular belief into what the Genesis narrative teaches.

2.4 Wikipedia - Creation science

Creation science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove or reinterpret the scientific facts, theoriesand scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology and biological evolution.

The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that creation science is a religious, not a scientific view, and that creation science does not qualify as science because it lacks empirical support, supplies no tentative hypotheses, and resolves to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes. Creation science has been characterized as a pseudo-scientific attempt to map the Bible into scientific facts. 

According to a popular introductory philosophy of science text, "virtually all professional biologists regard creation science as a sham".

2.5 Creation Science - The Biologists' View 

From the book: Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond 
http://www.amazon.com/Scientists-Confront-Creationism-Intelligent-Design/dp/0393330737/

"Most creationists are simply people who choose to believe that God created the world-either as described in Scripture or through evolution. Creation Scientists, by contrast, strive to use legitimate scientific means both to disprove evolutionary theory and to prove the creation account as described in Scripture."

3 Intelligent Design Creationism


3.1 The Discovery Institute

The main spokesman for Intelligent Design is Michael Behe whose creationist philsophy is based on the problem of "complex organs" that Darwin referred to in The Origin of the Species.  He is sponsored by the so-called "Discovery Institute", which advocates the pseudoscience "intelligent design" and has a mission to teach creationist anti-evolution beliefs in United States public high school science courses alongside accepted scientific theories.

Behe builds on this by focusing on the biochemistry of life in an attempt to show that it is impossible for some organisms to have resuled from a step-by-step natural process. Here's a typical extract from Behe's work…

…as biochemists have begun to examine apparently simple structures like cillia and flagella, they have discovered staggering complexity, with dozens or even hundreds of precisely tailored parts. It is very likely that many of the parts we have not considered here are required for any cilium to function in a cell. As the number of required parts increases, the difficulty of gradually putting the system together skyrockets, and the likelihood of indirect scenarios plummets. Darwin looks more and more forlorn.  

There are a number of flaws in Behe's approach but let's give credit where it's due - we should applaud Behe for coming up with a hypothesis that is falsifiable (the irriducible complexity of the flagellum for example). Unfortunately for Behe, his hypothesis has been tested and it has been shown that the flagellum is not irriducibly complex.

But that's not the main problem with Behe's approach. Science is full of unresolved questions - but that's what science is - without such questions there would be no such thing as science. So yes, we have a lot to learn about the molecular structure of living organisms and how they evolved. So if evolutionary biologists haven't come up with a precise sequence of evolution for all the organisms culminating in a certain bacteria, that's a signal for further research. Behe is using the God of the Gaps argument.

What is Behe trying to say? Is he assuming a failure of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution? If so, is he proposing a different natural process to natural selection? No.

In fact, he is saying that there can be no such sequence, therefore the Creator introduced certain biological organisms fully formed, as per Genesis, but on a smaller scale, because any pre-cursor organisms could not possibly have existed. And so Intelligent Design is simply a "born again" Creationism.

3.2 The  National Academy of science 

"Intelligent design" creationism is not supported by scientific evidence.  In addition to its scientific failings, standard creationist arguments are fallacious in that they are based on a false dichotomy. Even if their negative arguments against evolution were correct, that would not establish the creationists' claims. There may be alternative explanations. For example, it would be incorrect to conclude that because there is no evidence that it is raining outside, it must be sunny. Other explanations also might be possible. Science requires testable evidence for a hypothesis, not just challenges against one's opponent. Intelligent design is not a scientific concept because it cannot be empirically tested."

An excellent article from the most highly respected scientific body in the USA:
http://www.nas.edu/evolution/IntelligentDesign.html

4 Summary
There seems to be no need for a new term other than "Creationist." And it's wrong to lump "all believers in God as Creationists" when clearly they are not.