This article presents an overview of creationism by country.
Africa Kenya In 2006 the Pentecostal church, led by Bishop Boniface Adoyo, launched a campaign to give less prominence to fossilised human bones displayed in the National Museum. These fossils, discovered by Richard Leakey in the Great Rift Valley region, are documented by science as remains of the earliest known human beings. Kenyan evangelical Christians have disputed the significance of those discoveries. Leakey and Bishop Adoyo were interviewed by Richard Dawkins for his The Genius of Charles Darwin series.
South Africa A 2011 Ipsos survey found that 56% of responders in South Africa identified themselves as “creationists and believe that human beings were in fact created by a spiritual force such as the God they believe in and do not believe that the origin of man came from evolving from other species such as apes”.
Americas Brazil Brazil has had two creationist societies since the 1970s—the Brazilian Association for Creation Research and the Brazilian Creation Society. According to a 2004 survey, 41% of Brazil believe that "the first humans were created no more than 10,000 years ago."Numbers 2006
A 2011 Ipsos survey found that 47% of responders in Brazil identified themselves as “creationists and believe that human beings were in fact created by a spiritual force such as the God they believe in and do not believe that the origin of man came from evolving from other species such as apes”.
United States
In the US some religious communities have refused to accept naturalistic explanations and tried to counter them. The term started to become associated with Christian fundamentalist opposition to human evolution and belief in a young Earth in 1929. Several US states passed laws against the teaching of evolution in public schools, as upheld in the Scopes Trial. Evolution was omitted entirely from school textbooks in most of the US until the 1960s. Since then, renewed efforts to introduce teaching creationism in American public schools in the form of Flood geology, creation science, and intelligent design have been consistently held to contravene the constitutional separation of church and state by a succession of legal judgments. The meaning of the term creationism was contested, but by the 1980s it had been co-opted by proponents of creation science and Flood geology.
Most of the anti-evolutionists of the 1920s believed in forms of old Earth creationism, which accepts geological findings and other methods of dating the Earth and believes that these findings do not contradict the Book of Genesis, but rejects evolution. At that time only a minority held to young Earth creationism, proponents of which believe that the Earth is thousands rather than billions of years old, and typically believe that the days in chapter one of the Book of Genesis are 24 hours in length. In the 1960s, this became the most prominent form of anti-evolution. From the 1860s forms of theistic evolution had developed; this term refers to beliefs in creation which are compatible with the scientific view of evolution and the age of the Earth, as held by mainstream Christian denominations. There are other religious people who support creationism, but in terms of allegorical interpretations of the Book of Genesis.
By the start of the 20th century, evolution was widely accepted and was beginning to be taught in American public schools. After World War I, popular belief that German aggression resulted from a Darwinian doctrine of "survival of the fittest" inspired William Jennings Bryan to campaign against the teaching of Darwinian ideas of human evolution. In the 1920s, the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy led to an upsurge of fundamentalist religious fervor in which schools were prevented from teaching evolution through state laws such as Tennessee's 1925 Butler Act,, Context, p. 19. and by getting evolution removed from biology textbooks nationwide. Creationism became associated in common usage with opposition to evolution.
In 1961 in the US, an attempt to repeal the Butler Act failed. The Genesis Flood by Henry M. Morris brought the Seventh-day Adventist biblically literal Flood geology of George McCready Price to a wider audience, popularizing the idea of young Earth creationism,Forster & Marston 1999 and by 1965 the term "scientific creationism" had gained currency. Decision, January 5, 1982. The 1968 Epperson v. Arkansas judgment ruled that state laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits state aid to religion, and when in 1975 Daniel v. Waters ruled that a state law requiring biology textbooks discussing "origins or creation of man and his world" to give equal treatment to creation as per the Book of Genesis was unconstitutional, a new group identifying themselves as creationists promoted 'creation science' which omitted explicit biblical references.
In 1981, the state of Arkansas passed a law, Act 590, mandating that "creation science" be given equal time in public schools with evolution, and defining creation science as positing the "creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing," as well as explaining the Earth's geology by "the occurrence of a worldwide flood." This was ruled unconstitutional at McLean v. Arkansas in January 1982 as the creationists' methods were not scientific but took the literal wording of the Book of Genesis and attempted to find scientific support for it. Louisiana introduced similar legislation that year. A series of judgments and appeals led to the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard that it too violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
"Creation science" could no longer be taught in public schools, and in drafts of the creation science school textbook Of Pandas and People all references to creation or creationism were changed to refer to intelligent design. Proponents of the intelligent design movement organised widespread campaigning to considerable effect. They officially denied any links to creation or religion, and claimed that "creationism" only referred to young Earth creationism with Flood geology; but in Kitzmiller v. Dover the court found intelligent design to be religious, and unable to dissociate itself from its creationist roots, as part of the ruling that teaching intelligent design in public school science classes was unconstitutional.
The percentage of people in the US who accept the idea of human evolution declined from 45% in 1985 to 40% in 2005, while the percentage of people who reject evolution also declined from 48% to 39%. A Gallup poll reported that the percentage of people in the US who believe in a strict interpretation of creationism had fallen to 40% in 2010 after a high of 46% in 2006. However, the percentage rose back to 46% in 2012. The highest the percentage has risen between 1982 and 2010 was 47% in 1994 and 2000 according to the report. Gallup's survey indicated that belief in creationism has been relatively stable, although it has declined slightly in recent years. Its most recent poll found that 40% of Americans believe in creationism. The report found that Americans who are less educated are more likely to hold a creationist view while those with a college education are more likely to hold a view involving evolution. 47% of those with no more than a high school education believe in creationism while 22% of those with a post graduate education hold that view. The poll also found that church attendance dramatically increased adherence to a strict creationist view (22% for those who do not attend church, 60% for those who attend weekly). The higher percentage of Republicans who identified with a creationist view is described as evidence of the strong relationship between religion and politics as the U.S. Republicans also attend church weekly more than Democratic or independent voters. Non-Republican voters are twice as likely to hold a nontheistic view of evolution than Republican voters.
Among US states, acceptance of evolution has a strong negative correlation with religiosity and a strong positive relationship with science degrees awarded, bachelor's degree attainment, advanced degree attainment, average teacher salary, and GDP per capita. In other words, states in which more people say that religion is very important to their lives tend to show less acceptance of evolution. The better the education of individuals, their educational system, or the higher their income, the more they accept evolution, though the US as a country has a comparatively well educated population but lower acceptance of evolution than other countries.
Asia
South Korea Since 1981, the Korea Association for Creation Research has grown to 16 branches, with 1000 members and 500 Ph.Ds. On August 22–24, 1991, recognizing the 10th anniversary of KACR, an International Symposium on Creation Science was held with 4,000 in attendance. In 1990, the book The Natural Sciences was written by Young-Gil Kim and 26 other fellow scientists in Korea with a creationist viewpoint. The textbook drew the interest of college communities, and today, many South Korean universities are using it.
Since 1991, creation science has become a regular university course at Myongji University, which has a centre for creation research. Since that time, other universities have begun to offer creation science courses. At Handong Global University, creationist Young-Gil Kim was inaugurated as president in March 1995. At Myongji University, creationist Woongsang Lee is a biology professor. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology is where the Research Association of Creation Science was founded and many graduate students are actively involved. In 2008, a survey found that 36% of South Koreans disagreed with the statement that "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." In May 2012, publishers of high school science textbooks decided to remove references to evolution following a petition by a creationist group. However, the ensuing controversy prompted the government to appoint a panel of scientists to look into the matter, and the government urged the publishers to keep the references to evolution following the recommendation of the panel.
Australia In the late 1970s, Answers in Genesis, a creationist research organization, was founded in Australia. In 1994, Answers in Genesis expanded from Australia to the US. It subsequently expanded into the UK, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Creationists in Australia have been the leading influence on the development of creation science in the US for the last 20 years. Two of the three main international creation science organizations all have original roots within Australia – Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries.
In 1980, the Queensland state government of Joh Bjelke-Petersen allowed the teaching of creationism as science to school children. On May 29, 2010, it was announced that creationism and intelligent design will be discussed in history classes as part of the new national curriculum. It will be placed in the subject of ancient history, under the topic of "controversies."
Ian Plimer, an anti-creationist geologist, reported being attacked by creationists. A few public lectures have been given in rented rooms at universities, by visiting American speakers, and speakers with doctorates purchased by mail from Florida sites.Plimer 1994 A court case claimed by Plimer to have been taken by him against prominent creationists found, according to him, "that the creationists had stolen the work of others for financial profit, that the creationists told lies under oath and that the creationists were engaged in fraud." The debate was featured on the science television program Quantum. In 1989, Plimer debated American creationist Duane Gish.