Begin text copy from logical subpage to fix broken link and to restore continuity of dialog Creationism is the explanation that the universe and all life were created by the deliberate act of God In looking through the historical record at the competition between creation and evolution in Darwin s day I was impressed by Thomas Huxley s 1887 account of how Origin of Species provided the first explanation that in Huxley s view was a better explanation than creation Huxley describes the sense in which he rejected creation as an explanation If Agassiz told me that the forms of life which had successively tenanted the globe were the incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity and that he had wiped out one set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape I found myself not only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the facts of paleontology upon which this astounding hypothesis was founded but I had to confess my want of any means of testing the correctness of his explanation of them And besides that I could by no means see what the explanation explained Huxley describes his similar rejection of the explanations of the evolutionists prior to Darwin And by way of being perfectly fair I had exactly the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851 8 A thorough going evolutionist was Mr Herbert Spencer whose acquaintance I made I think in 1852 Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on this topic But even my friend s rare dialectic skill and copiousness of illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position I took my stand upon two grounds firstly that up to that time the evidence in favor of transmutation was wholly insufficient and secondly that no suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed which had been made was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable Furthermore any self respecting religion neutral anthropologist such as Robert L Carneiro Curator of the American Museum of Natural History would classify creation and evolution as mere successive stages of incomplete but improving explanations in a universe where there is no God to assist the women and men who attempt to discover the truth of their origins From all of the above I suggest that it is more accurate to define creationism as an explanation rather than a belief After all the survival of the belief derives from the usefulness of the belief and a primary use of creationism is explaining how we all got here According to Thomas Huxley until Origin of Species creationism was as good an explanation as evolutionism And for the majority of American voters who can not understand the evolutionists explanations creationism is a better explanation than evolutionism even yet today 16 08 25 Aug 2004 UTC Considering that Belief in the psychological sense is a representational mental state that takes the form of a propositional attitude and in the religious sense belief refers to a part of a wider spiritual or moral foundation generally called faith and that creationism is part and parcel of the christian faith I think the use of the term belief was completely justified Creationism is indeed an explanation but it is an explanation founded on belief hence it is a belief It is not founded on knowledge or evidence to imply otherwise which is what you re doing is to create a false impression that Creationism shares some sort of parity with other explanations which do not require belief in the supernatural It does not You seem to be substituting your own personal bias for this imputed evolutionist bias you claim is on the Creationism page 16 48 25 Aug 2004 UTC Personal bias Nope I have b