The Skeptiseum originally opened this special feature gallery on Creationism as part of the 2002 worldwide celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday (February 12th: see The Darwin Day Web site), his genius, and the spirit of scientific inquiry into the nature and origin of things. Please visit the Darwin Day Web site for more information about events celebrating his birthday and achievements. "In the beginning..." The book of Genesis, the first of the "Five Books of Moses" in the Hebrew Bible, has served as the explanation of the origin of the universe and all life for millions of people for over two millennia. According to this account, a single creator-god fashioned humans and every other living thing in all their complexity. At the end of the European Middle Ages, Western tradition held that all of the world´s inhabitants had been created by God in one place, the Garden of Eden, soon after the formation of the earth. But as the scientific revolution began to unfold some 400 years ago, naturalists started to catalog fossils according to the layers in which they were found. Soon a very unexpected and troubling pattern emerged. |