Progressive creationism (see for comparison
intelligent design) is the 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 because it is biologically untenable and not supported by the
fossil record, and it rejects the concept of universal descent from a
last universal common ancestor. Thus the evidence for macroevolution is considered 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.