Trichotomy

The strangest thing about the creation-evolution debate is that it is a trichotomy, not a dichotomy.  There are three basic views and the historical creationist position is hardly known today.

The traditional (ancient, really) creation theory is that the world is the same as it was when first created.  There has been no significant change in the earth, the heavens, life, etc.  The classical variant of this view does not include a Fall.  But historically Christian creationists have not made much of the Fall — even today the Fall does not figure in our models as much as the Flood.

The traditional creation theory was undermined in the 19th century because of the discovery of species in fossils and bones that did not match contemporary species — extinction is a change that traditional creation theory did not allow.  This is the view the Darwin argued against and it is the view that evolutionists still argue against today.

Evolutionists use the word “evolution” ambiguously but creationists use the word “creation” ambiguously, too.  If there is any significant change in the world since creation, then there is something other than creation going on.  A different word would help to distinguish that.

Creationists make the job of evolutionists easier by letting them argue against traditional creation theory and not a modern creation theory, for example, that Henry Morris wrote about (as he promoted the dichotomy view).

May 2013