The Brazilian Creationist Society (SCB) will complete 50 years in 2022. Its history is linked to the pioneering spirit of the family of engineer Ruy Carlos de Camargo Vieira, now 92 years old, with the support of Francisco Batista de Mello, Nahor Neves de Souza Júnior, Humberto Ricci, and other Adventists from São Carlos, São Paulo. They took the first steps towards the formation of the entity that promotes creationism in the country. Over the decades, several other people have used their knowledge and talents in this cause.

A Historical Passion for Science and Faith

The idea of organizing a creationist entity, at the end of 1971, is directly linked to a cultural week organized the previous year in São Carlos by Pastor Leondenis Vendramin, then a district pastor in that city. At this event, several lecturers, mostly professors from the former Adventist Teaching Institute (today the Adventist University Center of São Paulo [UNASPnasp], São Paulo campus), were invited to discuss subjects of cultural and scientific interest.

It was during this event that another important figure came on the scene: the mathematician Orlando Rubem Ritter. He was honored by SCB as the pioneer of creationism in Brazil in August 2011 in Curitiba. During the 1970 Cultural Week, Professor Ritter presented a lecture on dating with radioactive carbon. At the end of his talk, he indicated a critical bibliography on the subject, mentioning the Creation Research Society. This was a North American creationist organization, founded about ten years ago, that published its quarterly journal with very well-reasoned articles.

The impact of this contact between Professor Ritter and the future editors of the Revista Criacionista (Ruy Vieira and his son Rui) inspired them to publish, initially, translations into Portuguese of articles from that periodical in the United States. "In this way," says Ruy, "with the initial support provided by Professor Ritter, and with the support of the Creation Research Society, which authorized the translation of the articles, it was possible to informally establish the Brazilian Creationist Society."

However, the beginning of SCB's activities occurred only in April 1972, with the launching of the 500 copies of the first issue of the Creationist Leaf (which was then renamed Creationist Magazine and, in 2022, reached its 102nd issue). In the early 1990s, the SCB headquarters was transferred from the interior of São Paulo to Brasilia. This move marked a phase of many advances for the entity. Besides improvements in the Revista Criacionista, several books began to be published, and videos, educational kits, and posters were produced. In this period, a series of lectures to divulge creationism also began in several Brazilian capitals: seminars that were entitled "The Philosophy of Origins."

Founding and Expansion

In 2000, SCB was formalized as a non-profit legal entity, with 59 founding members. Some years later, its administrative headquarters was inaugurated in its own room, and in 2004, the ribbon was cut at the inauguration of its cultural center in Brasilia.

To celebrate SCB's 50th anniversary, the Faith and Science Compendium was produced. The material gathers all the contents of the first 100 issues of its periodical, organized in a systematized way. It allows those interested in the study of the controversy between the two conceptual structures (creationism and evolutionism), which confront each other in the interpretation of the facts observed in nature, to have easy access to the vast literature on the basic aspects involved in this controversy. In addition to the articles in the Revista Criacionistal, the contents of other SCB publications from different periods have been incorporated into the compendium.

Strategic Position

For Dr. Ruy Vieira, it is important to continue defending and popularizing the creationist model "because the evolutionist conceptual structure, which disseminates [evolutionary] theories, when it confronts the biblical creationist conceptual structure, dresses itself up in supposedly 'scientific' garb and begins to exert an enormous bad effect aimed at the destruction of biblical revelation, which constitutes the epistemological basis for the validation of creationist presuppositions.”

Marcos Natal de Souza, a geologist and the current president of SCB, says, "Among the challenges of the society for the coming years is the construction of the virtual museum, which will allow remote access to the entire collection of the society, and the construction of a new headquarters in a place still to be defined.”

SCB numbers:

• 50 years of existence

• 27 seminars on The Philosophy of Origins held in various parts of Brazil and abroad

• More than 50 books published for different age groups

• 102 editions of the periodical Revista Criacionista

The original article was published on the South American Division’s Portuguese-language website.