Special Creation - Creationism

Creationism

In the creationist use of the phrase, special creation adheres to a literal interpretation of the account of creation in the Book of Genesis, accepting it as an accurate historical account of the creation of the universe in essentially its present form over the course of six 24-hour days. Special creation was the dominant theory of life's origins in the western world from the 16th century until the middle of the 19th century when it was supplanted by evolutionary thought.

Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research defined "special creation" as being creation using supernatural processes:

We do not know how the Creator created, what processes He used, for He used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigation anything about the creative processes used by the Creator.

Dennis Jensen of the American Scientific Affiliation states that special creation means that complex living things did not descend from simpler ones but were created independently."

James B. Stenson writes that for fundamentalists, special creation follows from a literal reading of the Genesis account; there is a "special creation" of each separate kind in six 24-hour days, starting a few thousand years ago.

In The Mystery of Life's Origin, Charles B. Thaxton argues for "Special Creation by a Creator beyond the Cosmos", and asserts that special creation holds "that the source that produced life was intelligent".