Creationism is the religious belief that the Universe and life originated "from specific acts of divine creation. For young Earth creationists, this includes a biblical literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative and the rejection of the scientific theory of evolution. As the history of evolutionary thought developed from the 18th century on, various views aimed at reconciling the Abrahamic religions and Genesis with biology and other sciences developed in Western culture. Those holding that species had been created separately (such as Philip Gosse in 1857) were generally called "advocates of creation" but were also called "creationists," as in private correspondence between Charles Darwin and his friends. As the creation–evolution controversy developed over time, the term "anti-evolutionists" became common.
In 1929 in the United States, the term "creationism" first became associated with Christian fundamentalists, specifically with their rejection of human evolution and belief in a young Earth—although this usage was contested by other groups, such as old Earth creationists and evolutionary creationists, who hold different concepts of creation, such as the acceptance of the age of the Earth and biological evolution as understood by the scientific community.