Re: definition of "Creationism"

[David Bowman <David_Bowman@GEORGETOWNCOLLEGE.EDU>]

Regarding the C/creationist nomenclature mentioned by Dan S.:

> When I see "Creationism" with a capital C, I assume it to refer to
> the doctrine of the so-called "scientific creationists" ....
>
> Religious people of a more liberal persuasion who believe in divine
> creation but also believe in evolution and a 10-billion-year-old
> universe should probably call themselves something other than
> "creationists", or at least use a lower-case c.

Just to go further from list-appropriate topics let me mention that the
term 'creationist/ism' has a completely different meaning in some areas
of theology & metaphysics.  In those circles creationism is the doctrine
that individual human souls are separately created de novo by God and
implanted sometime between conception and birth.  A person holding to
such a doctrine is a creationist.  This doctrine of creationism is to be
distinguished from other theories of the soul such as the Hindu doctrine
of a universal world soul/atman and its attendant reincarnationist ideas
of transmigration upon individual death & incarnation.  It is also
distinguished from the Mormon (and some others) doctrine of the eternal
preexistence of souls in heaven before conception & birth.

Thus, even though the pope recently publically proclaimed the
acceptability of the theory of evolution for Catholics in his "fide et
ratio" bull/encyclical/?? (not being Catholic, I don't know the official
name for the document) it is still the fact the the Roman Catholic
Church doctrine requires creationism for the faithful in this latter
sense of the term.

David Bowman
David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu