A few months ago, in another thread, I was asked about "Young Earth Creationism". I did not then have time to answer fully, but I will try to do so now. My purpose is to explain, to those who are interested, what Young Earth Creationism is.

There are many views about the origin of life, the universe, and everything.   Young Earth Creationism ( henceforth "YEC") is one of those views. The "creationism" part of the name indicates that it requires supernatural intervention.   The "young" part refers to the belief that earth (and the entire universe) is thousands of years old (rather than billions of years old).   

In contrast to YEC, the theories and hypotheses that make up the current consensus view at most scientific institutions do not require supernatural intervention, but do require the universe to be billions of years old. I am going to refer to these theories and hypotheses as "Ancient Earth Naturalism" (henceforth "AEN"). AEN is sometimes informally referred to as "evolution". However, AEN includes more than Darwinian evolution. It also includes the cosmic inflation hypothesis of the Big Bang theory, the solar nebular disk model of planetary formation, geological uniformitarianism, the "out of Africa" hypothesis of the origin of Homo sapiens, and so on.   

There are hybrid views that, like YEC, require supernatural intervention and, like AEN, require an ancient universe.

In the following posts, I will list some beliefs which are part of Ancient Earth Naturalism (AEN). I will also list the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) response to those beliefs.

Kent