<<Also please note that I'm using the term
"creationist" in a specific, and most American, way, meaning
people who promote (among other things) the teaching of
a literal interpretation of Genesis as fact in
science classes.>>
To make this actually
relevant to quiz bowl -- i.e., the history of science
questions that Eric S. really loves -- in the nineteenth
century, there really _were_ scientific creationists.
These biologists looked at the evidence then available
(much less than is available today, of course) and
concluded that evolution was the less likely hypothesis.
Famous Darwin contemporaries like Louis Agassiz and
Georges Cuvier fit into this category -- there could
easily be questions on them. Even those guys, however,
thought of Genesis as at best an allegory, since the
evidence for a great age of the Earth was already
overwhelming. Also, Darwin was far from the first evolutionist
-- he just came up with the first widely-accepted
theory for how it works.
Doug