Introduction
Unlike other matters connected to the history of Science, creationism[1] is a vexed question in a number of contemporary religious milieus. Its thorny nature calls from the outset for precisions on one's standpoint and the methodological approach adopted. Our angle of scrutiny is the history of Christianity. It would be futile to seek in these pages a contribution towards the history of science as such or a philosophical or theological enquiry into the question of the creation of the world. The author of this chapter was educated in the context of a European university (Geneva, Switzerland) which, born in a Christian and specifically Protestant context, is today jealous of its secular outlook[2]. He teaches in a faculty which vouchsafes academic freedom to its members, thereby excluding any deference to whatever ideological position, however promoted it be by this or that Protestant lobby.
In this framework, creationism is historically considered as a doctrine based on religious certainties – in this instance the notion of creation as understood according to the Bible – and intent on validating these certainties with the endorsement of scientific authority. From a philosophical viewpoint, such an approach mixes categories to be methodologically distinguished in that it postulates a finality for all natural phenomena and that it is founded in texts given as revealed (the Bible and notably the account of creation as stated in the first chapters of Genesis[3]) in order to develop a purportedly scientific argument. Arguing in the philosophical terms of his own discipline Paul Clavier has shown that it is wholly possible to conceive of a philosophy or a theology in which a transcending agent has played or still plays a role in the springing forth and progress of the world (viz. Qu'est-ce que le créationnisme?, 2012). But we then have a metaphysical assertion that could in no way interfere with the scientific approach. These reasons, which could be vastly enlarged upon, justify that creationism should not be considered as a science but indeed (and no matter what its spokespersons may say) as a religious ideology for one thing, and that furthermore it should not be taught in European universities' science departments.
