Before we examine creationism, we must first understand what is religion. Religion is not a step-by-step recipe for generating new information, as is science, and it doesn't pretend to be. To define religion is a difficult task. In the most general terms, it is a social system that proscribes different practices or behaviours in order to better live together, based on supernatural beliefs. There are many ways of doing this--as many ways as there are religions. But there is only one way of doing science. Many religions are mutually contradictory, for example some claim that there are many gods, whereas others state that there is only the one true god. So, they cannot all be correct and there are some people who feel that none of them are correct. But that is another discussion.

  It is important for us to understand that not all religious people are creationists. There are subgroups in many religions called fundamentalists. These people hold that the literal interpretation of sacred documents represents direct communication from a supernatural being, and is therefore correct. There are many flaws with this which will be discussed in the arguments section of this display.