Editing Progressive creationism (section)

==Historical development==
At the end of the 18th century, the French [[anatomist]] [[Georges Cuvier]] proposed that there had been a series of successive creations due to [[catastrophism]]. Cuvier believed that God destroyed previously created forms through regional catastrophes such as floods and afterwards repopulated the region with new forms.<ref>A Companion to Biological Anthropology, Clark Spencer Larson, 2010, p. 555</ref> The French [[naturalist]] [[Alcide d'Orbigny]] held similar ideas; he linked different stages in the [[geologic time scale]] to separate creation events. At the time these ideas were not popular with strict Christians. In defense of the theory of successive creations, [[Pierre Toussaint Marcel de Serres de Mesplès|Marcel de Serres]] (1783–1862), a French [[geologist]], suggested that new creations grow more and more perfect as the time goes on.<ref>Gabriel Gohau, Albert V. Carozzi, Marguerite Carozzi, A history of geology, 1990, p. 161</ref>

The idea that there had been a series of episodes of divine creation of new species with many thousands of years in between them, serving to prepare the world for the eventual arrival of humanity, was popular with [[Anglican]] [[geologist]]s like [[William Buckland]] in the early 19th century; they proposed it as an explanation for the patterns of [[faunal succession]] in the fossil record that showed that the types of organisms that lived on the earth had changed over time. Buckland explained the idea in detail in his book ''Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology'' (1836), which was one of the eight ''[[Bridgewater Treatises]]''. Buckland presented this idea in part to counter pre-Darwin theories on the [[transmutation of species]].<ref>Cadbury (2000) pp. 190–94</ref> The Scottish geologist and evangelical Christian [[Hugh Miller]] also argued for many separate creation events brought about by divine interventions, and explained his ideas in his book ''The testimony of the rocks; or, Geology in its bearings on the two theologies, natural and revealed'' in 1857.<ref>Science and religion in the nineteenth century, Tess Cosslett, 1984, p. 67</ref>

[[Louis Agassiz]], a Swiss-American naturalist, argued for separate divine creations. In his work he noted similarities of distribution of like [[species]] in different geological era; a phenomenon clearly not the result of migration.  Agassiz questioned how fish of the same species live in lakes well separated with no joining waterway. He concluded they were created at both locations. According to Agassiz the intelligent adaptation of creatures to their environments testified to an intelligent plan. The conclusions of his studies led him to believe that whichever [[region]] each animal was found in, it was created there: "animals are naturally autochthones wherever they are found". After further research he later extended this idea to humans; he wrote that different [[race (classification of humans)|race]]s had been created separately. This became known as his theory of [[polygenism]].<ref>Scott Mandelbrote, Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700–Present, Volume 2, 2009, pp. 159–64</ref><ref>A Companion to Biological Anthropology, Clark Spencer Larsen, 2010 p. 556</ref>

===Revival===
The [[American Scientific Affiliation]] (ASA) was founded in the early 1940s as an organization of orthodox Christian scientists.<ref>Numbers (2006) p. 181</ref>  Although its original leadership favored [[Biblical literalism]] and it was intended to be anti-evolutionary, it rejected the creationist theories propounded by [[George McCready Price]] ([[young Earth creationism]]) and [[Harry Rimmer]] ([[gap creationism]]), and it was soon moving rapidly in the direction of [[theistic evolution]], with some members "stopping off" on the less [[Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy|Modernist]] view that they called "progressive creationism." It was a view developed in the 1930s by [[Wheaton College (Illinois)|Wheaton College]] graduate [[Russell L. Mixter]].<ref>Numbers (2006) pp. 194–95</ref> In 1954 Baptist theologian and [[Christian apologist]] [[Bernard Ramm]] (an associate of the inner circle of the ASA) wrote ''The Christian View of Science and Scripture'', advocating Progressive Creationism which did away with the necessity for a [[young Earth creationism|young Earth]], a [[Genesis flood|global flood]] and the recent appearance of humans.<ref>Numbers (2006) p. 208</ref>