It is a common and often repeated fallacy that the Bible teaches that the earth is flat. The reference that most refer to contains the greek word for "quarters" or "quadrants" referring to the 4 compass points (which we use to this day: North-South-East-West). The verse (in modern english) should be rendered "the four quadrants of the earth." The King James english ( the translation that most refer to) has words that today have completely different meanings. For example, the simple word "LET" in the "king's english" meant to RESTRAIN, but now, 400+ years later, it means to ALLOW.
Also, in the book of Isaiah (written approx. 700 BC) it says that God is above "the sphere (circle) of the earth." In the book of Job (perhaps the oldest of the books of the Bible) it says that God "hangs the earth upon nothing." God is aware of the solar system. Even we, in this enlightened age, say things that are strictly-speaking, incorrect. Phrases such as "watching the sunrise" is actually inaccurate, but of course, it is true in the relative sense of an observer on the earth as fixed point of reference (which is a logical position). You may get a speeding ticket for exceeding the speed limit by 20 miles per hour, but ACTUALLY, due to the movement of the earth through space at many thousands of miles per hour, you may have actually been going backward by many factors. Try to use that with a cop, though. (Don't). Many things we say are spoken with a frame of reference in order to be ultimately meaningful. Many Bible passages contains similar language, and, with an understood frame of reference, are entirely accurate.
Returning to a definition for creationism, it need not be difficult. It refers to the study of cosmology that acknowledges God as it's origin. Since biology is a subset of cosmology, it is included (as are all of the fundamental sciences--physics, chemistry, etc.)
The problem with a presupposition such as naturalism, is that it must lead to illogical conclusions. For an analogy, imagine an aboriginal tribe (who believe that they are indeed alone on the earth) finding a computer circuit board. In their quest to explain its existence, they will have to go to ridiculous and highly-speculative and extrapolated theories to deny it's intelligent origin.
Just because someone can conceive of a "possible" way to arrive at complexity and order (look into information theory) does not indicate that it was the way in which it occurred.
As far as the fossil record goes, it has proved to be an embassment, rather than a vindication, for Darwin. This problem was highlighted by Niles Elredge and Stephen Jay Gould when they postulated the controversial punctuated-equilibrium hypothesis. Elredge laments:
“If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record that gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them.” (Elredge)
Regardless, abiogenesis seals the coffin of naturalism. For decades, even the greatest naturalist minds have come up against the proverbial brick wall in even hypothesizing a method that could arrive at information systems from dead chemicals.
Using inductive reasoning, though, we can intelligently conclude:
1. All languages, codes, encoding / decoding mechanisms we have observed come from intelligence.
2. DNA is a language (with an encode and decode process)
3. Therefore DNA came from intelligence.
We could go on with RNA transcriptioning, the perfection of DNA encoding from an engineering standpoint (using a 4-base system with nucleotide-triplets to construct protein chains), the fact that all amino acids in life are left-handed(contrary to all logic), the finiteness of time ("proven" by inflation models and the first and second law of thermodynamics), and on and on.
Yes, there is a solid and growing foundation for creationism. It is not a system based upon "well I just believe it that's why!" I certainly did not arrive at my current position that way, but only after research and study, especially Biblical prophecy. Like famous former-atheist C.S. Lewis, I was compelled by the evidence, evidence that he wanted to deny initially.
Regardless of all of the empirical dribble and quibble, the main thing to realize is that the same Creator that made you, became a man and died you, for me.
He died for me? Wow. That's a truth you can't hear and then walk away unchanged from. It will either break your heart into gratitude, or harden you into further rebellion and stubborness.
