Concept
Progressive creationism (see for comparison intelligent design) is the religious belief that God created new forms of life gradually over a period of hundreds of millions of years. As a form of old Earth creationism, it accepts mainstream geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth, some tenets of biology such as microevolution as well as archaeology to make its case. In this view creation occurred in rapid bursts in which all "kinds" of plants and animals appear in stages lasting millions of years. The bursts are followed by periods of stasis or equilibrium to accommodate new arrivals. These bursts represent instances of God creating new types of organisms by divine intervention. As viewed from the archaeological record, progressive creationism holds that "species do not gradually appear by the steady transformation of its ancestors; [but] appear all at once and "fully formed." The view rejects macroevolution, claiming it is biologically untenable and not supported by the fossil record, as well as rejects the concept of universal descent from a last universal common ancestor. Thus the evidence for macroevolution is claimed to be false, but microevolution is accepted as a genetic parameter designed by the Creator into the fabric of genetics to allow for environmental adaptations and survival. Generally, it is viewed by proponents as a middle ground between literal creationism and theistic evolution. 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. 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, Marcel de Serres (1783–1862), a French geologist, suggested that new creations grow more and more perfect as the time goes on.