According to creationists, the earth, its current life forms, and the rest of the universe were created by a Supreme Deity or God, through an act of Divine Will, and so it has been ever since. However, there are actually two types of creationists and they have slightly different views about the origins of life. The first type is young-earth creationists who propose that the earth and all life in it were created by God less than 10.000 years ago and the second one is old-earth creationists who accept the scientific data of earth's antiquity (Morris). Neither of the two creationists acknowledges the validity of evolution, but it should be noted that the type of creationist that are usually involved in debates with evolutionists is the young-earth creationist. .
According to the evolutionists, the origins of universe occurred billions of years ago. Once the universe started it began to evolve and brought into existence all forms of life in the Earth. Nevertheless, there are also two kinds of evolutionists. The first one is orthodox evolutionists who propose that the universe is the result of undirected processes and evolution happened without any intervention from supernatural power, while the second one is theistic evolutionists who believe that God created the universe and used physical and biological evolution to establish all life (Morris).
2.2. The Legal Debates.
Over the past century, there has been a battle between the proponents of evolution and creationism, particularly in regard to the validity of the two theories to be taught in public science classes. This struggle has become so intense that it has been taken to the court system. In Tennessee, nearly 75 years ago, John Thomas Scopes, a biology instructor was put on trial for teaching evolution (Moore, Jensen, & Hatch 2003). But now, it is the case of teaching creationism which is put on court system. Creationists have been demanding "equal time" for creation science because they believe that teaching only evolution will support the establishment of secularism and or atheism (Morris).
