International Journal of Korean History (Aug 2018)

The Creation Science Movement in Korea: A Perspective from the History and Philosophy of Science

  • Sang-yong Song

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22372/ijkh.2018.23.2.13
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 2
pp. 13 – 37

Abstract

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In the seventeenth century, science and religion clashed over cosmology. The relationship between science and religion was at extreme odds at the Galileo trials but softened in the twentieth century when the Catholic Church accepted the new science. Meanwhile, the evolutionary theory proposed in the nineteenth century lowered the status of humans to animals and damaged faith in biblical inspiration. The Scopes Trial in the southern United States in the 1920s was the result of the defiance of the Protestants, who insisted on a literal interpretation of the Bible. "Creation science," which began to thrive in the western United States in the 1960s, insisted on equal time in schools alongside evolutionary theory. After re-peated defeat in court, creation science is desperately trying to get its footing in science with a new name: intelligent design. The creation science movement that came Korea in the 1980s joined hands with Christian obscurantism and is running amok. When creationism pretends to be science, it is an unfair interference of religion in science. Creation science is a pseudoscience that cannot be accepted as science.

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