title: Creationism

text: Various supporters of Young Earth creationism have given different explanations for their belief that the universe is filled with false evidence of the universe's age, including a belief that some things needed to be created at a certain age for the ecosystems to function, or their belief that the creator was deliberately planting deceptive evidence. The idea has seen some revival in the 20th century by some modern creationists, who have extended the argument to address the "starlight problem". The idea has been criticised as Last Thursdayism, and on the grounds that it requires a deliberately deceptive creator.


title: Creationism

text: Theistic evolution, or evolutionary creation, is a belief that "the personal God of the Bible created the universe and life through evolutionary processes." According to the American Scientific Affiliation:


title: Creationism

text: Through the 19th century the term "creationism" most commonly referred to direct creation of individual souls, in contrast to traducianism. Following the publication of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", there was interest in ideas of Creation by divine law. In particular, the liberal theologian Baden Powell argued that this illustrated the Creator's power better than the idea of miraculous creation, which he thought ridiculous. When "On the Origin of Species" was published, the cleric Charles Kingsley wrote of evolution as "just as noble a conception of Deity." Darwin's view at the time was of God creating life through the laws of nature, and the book makes several references to "creation," though he later regretted using the term rather than calling it an unknown process. In America, Asa Gray argued that evolution is the secondary effect, or "modus operandi", of the first cause, design, and published a pamphlet defending the book in theistic terms, "Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology". Theistic evolution, also called, evolutionary creation, became a popular compromise, and St. George Jackson Mivart was among those accepting evolution but attacking Darwin's naturalistic mechanism. Eventually it was realised that supernatural intervention could not be a scientific explanation, and naturalistic mechanisms such as neo-Lamarckism were favoured as being more compatible with purpose than natural selection.


title: Creationism

text: Some theists took the general view that, instead of faith being in opposition to biological evolution, some or all classical religious teachings about Christian God and creation are compatible with some or all of modern scientific theory, including specifically evolution; it is also known as "evolutionary creation." In "Evolution versus Creationism", Eugenie Scott and Niles Eldredge state that it is in fact a type of evolution.


title: Creationism

text: It generally views evolution as a tool used by God, who is both the first cause and immanent sustainer/upholder of the universe; it is therefore well accepted by people of strong theistic (as opposed to deistic) convictions. Theistic evolution can synthesize with the day-age creationist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative; however most adherents consider that the first chapters of the Book of Genesis should not be interpreted as a "literal" description, but rather as a literary framework or allegory.


title: Creationism

text: From a theistic viewpoint, the underlying laws of nature were designed by God for a purpose, and are so self-sufficient that the complexity of the entire physical universe evolved from fundamental particles in processes such as stellar evolution, life forms developed in biological evolution, and in the same way the origin of life by natural causes has resulted from these laws.


title: Creationism

text: In one form or another, theistic evolution is the view of creation taught at the majority of mainline Protestant seminaries. For Roman Catholics, human evolution is not a matter of religious teaching, and must stand or fall on its own scientific merits. Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church are not in conflict. The Catechism of the Catholic Church comments positively on the theory of evolution, which is neither precluded nor required by the sources of faith, stating that scientific studies "have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man." Roman Catholic schools teach evolution without controversy on the basis that scientific knowledge does not extend beyond the physical, and scientific truth and religious truth cannot be in conflict. Theistic evolution can be described as "creationism" in holding that divine intervention brought about the origin of life or that divine laws govern formation of species, though many creationists (in the strict sense) would deny that the position is creationism at all. In the creation–evolution controversy, its proponents generally take the "evolutionist" side. This sentiment was expressed by Fr. George Coyne, (the Vatican's chief astronomer between 1978 and 2006):...in America, creationism has come to mean some fundamentalistic, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis. Judaic-Christian faith is radically creationist, but in a totally different sense. It is rooted in a belief that everything depends upon God, or better, all is a gift from God.


title: Creationism

text: While supporting the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science, the proponents of theistic evolution reject the implication taken by some atheists that this gives credence to ontological materialism. In fact, many modern philosophers of science, including atheists, refer to the long-standing convention in the scientific method that observable events in nature should be explained by natural causes, with the distinction that it does not assume the actual existence or non-existence of the supernatural.


title: Creationism

text: There are also non-Christian forms of creationism, notably Islamic creationism and Hindu creationism.


title: Creationism

text: In the creation myth taught by Bahá'u'lláh, the Baháʼí Faith founder, the universe has "neither beginning nor ending," and that the component elements of the material world have always existed and will always exist. With regard to evolution and the origin of human beings, `Abdu'l-Bahá gave extensive comments on the subject when he addressed western audiences in the beginning of the 20th century. Transcripts of these comments can be found in "Some Answered Questions", "Paris Talks" and "The Promulgation of Universal Peace". `Abdu'l-Bahá described the human species as having evolved from a primitive form to modern man, but that the capacity to form human intelligence was always in existence.


title: Creationism

text: Buddhism denies a creator deity and posits that mundane deities such as Mahabrahma are sometimes misperceived to be a creator. While Buddhism includes belief in divine beings called devas, it holds that they are mortal, limited in their power, and that none of them are creators of the universe. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Buddha also states that the cycle of rebirths stretches back hundreds of thousands of eons, without discernible beginning.


title: Creationism

text: Major Buddhist Indian philosophers such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dharmakirti and Buddhaghosa, consistently critiqued Creator God views put forth by Hindu thinkers.


title: Creationism

text: , most Christians around the world accepted evolution as the most likely explanation for the origins of species, and did not take a literal view of the Genesis creation narrative. The United States is an exception where belief in religious fundamentalism is much more likely to affect attitudes towards evolution than it is for believers elsewhere. Political partisanship affecting religious belief may be a factor because political partisanship in the US is highly correlated with fundamentalist thinking, unlike in Europe.


title: Creationism

text: Most contemporary Christian leaders and scholars from mainstream churches, such as Anglicans and Lutherans, consider that there is no conflict between the spiritual meaning of creation and the science of evolution. According to the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, "...for most of the history of Christianity, and I think this is fair enough, most of the history of the Christianity there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time."


title: Creationism

text: Leaders of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have made statements in favor of evolutionary theory, as have scholars such as the physicist John Polkinghorne, who argues that evolution is one of the principles through which God created living beings. Earlier supporters of evolutionary theory include Frederick Temple, Asa Gray and Charles Kingsley who were enthusiastic supporters of Darwin's theories upon their publication, and the French Jesuit priest and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw evolution as confirmation of his Christian beliefs, despite condemnation from Church authorities for his more speculative theories. Another example is that of Liberal theology, not providing any creation models, but instead focusing on the symbolism in beliefs of the time of authoring Genesis and the cultural environment.


title: Creationism

text: Many Christians and Jews had been considering the idea of the creation history as an allegory (instead of historical) long before the development of Darwin's theory of evolution. For example, Philo, whose works were taken up by early Church writers, wrote that it would be a mistake to think that creation happened in six days, or in any set amount of time. Augustine of the late fourth century who was also a former neoplatonist argued that everything in the universe was created by God at the same moment in time (and not in six days as a literal reading of the Book of Genesis would seem to require); It appears that both Philo and Augustine felt uncomfortable with the idea of a seven-day creation because it detracted from the notion of God's omnipotence. In 1950, Pope Pius XII stated limited support for the idea in his encyclical "Humani generis". In 1996, Pope John Paul II stated that "new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis," but, referring to previous papal writings, he concluded that "if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God."


title: Creationism

text: In the US, Evangelical Christians have continued to believe in a literal Genesis. Members of evangelical Protestant (70%), Mormon (76%) and Jehovah's Witnesses (90%) denominations are the most likely to reject the evolutionary interpretation of the origins of life.


title: Creationism

text: Jehovah's Witnesses adhere to a combination of gap creationism and day-age creationism, asserting that scientific evidence about the age of the universe is compatible with the Bible, but that the 'days' after Genesis 1:1 were each thousands of years in length.


title: Creationism

text: The historic Christian literal interpretation of creation requires the harmonization of the two creation stories, Genesis 1:1–2:3 and Genesis 2:4–25, for there to be a consistent interpretation. They sometimes seek to ensure that their belief is taught in science classes, mainly in American schools. Opponents reject the claim that the literalistic biblical view meets the criteria required to be considered scientific. Many religious groups teach that God created the Cosmos. From the days of the early Christian Church Fathers there were allegorical interpretations of the Book of Genesis as well as literal aspects.


title: Creationism

text: Christian Science, a system of thought and practice derived from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, interprets the Book of Genesis figuratively rather than literally. It holds that the material world is an illusion, and consequently not created by God: the only real creation is the spiritual realm, of which the material world is a distorted version. Christian Scientists regard the story of the creation in the Book of Genesis as having symbolic rather than literal meaning. According to Christian Science, both creationism and evolution are false from an absolute or "spiritual" point of view, as they both proceed from a (false) belief in the reality of a material universe. However, Christian Scientists do not oppose the teaching of evolution in schools, nor do they demand that alternative accounts be taught: they believe that both material science and literalist theology are concerned with the illusory, mortal and material, rather than the real, immortal and spiritual. With regard to material theories of creation, Eddy showed a preference for Darwin's theory of evolution over others.


title: Creationism

text: Hindu creationists claim that species of plants and animals are material forms adopted by pure consciousness which live an endless cycle of births and rebirths. Ronald Numbers says that: "Hindu Creationists have insisted on the antiquity of humans, who they believe appeared fully formed as long, perhaps, as trillions of years ago." Hindu creationism is a form of old Earth creationism, according to Hindu creationists the universe may even be older than billions of years. These views are based on the Vedas, the creation myths of which depict an extreme antiquity of the universe and history of the Earth.


title: Creationism

text: In Hindu cosmology, time cyclically repeats general events of creation and destruction, with many "first man", each known as Manu, the progenitor of mankind. Each Manu successively reigns over a 306.72 million year period known as a "manvantara", each ending with the destruction of mankind followed by a "sandhya" (period of non-activity) before the next "manvantara". 120.53 million years have elapsed in the current "manvantara" (current mankind) according to calculations on Hindu units of time. The universe is cyclically created at the start and destroyed at the end of a "kalpa" (day of Brahma), lasting for 4.32 billion years, which is followed by a "pralaya" (period of dissolution) of equal length. 1.97 billion years have elapsed in the current "kalpa" (current universe).The universal elements or building blocks (unmanifest matter) exists for a period known as a "maha-kalpa", lasting for 311.04 trillion years, which is followed by a "maha-pralaya" (period of great dissolution) of equal length. 155.52 trillion years have elapsed in the current "maha-kalpa".


title: Creationism

text: Islamic creationism is the belief that the universe (including humanity) was directly created by God as explained in the Quran. It usually views the Book of Genesis as a corrupted version of God's message. The creation myths in the Quran are vaguer and allow for a wider range of interpretations similar to those in other Abrahamic religions.


title: Creationism

text: Islam also has its own school of theistic evolutionism, which holds that mainstream scientific analysis of the origin of the universe is supported by the Quran. Some Muslims believe in evolutionary creation, especially among liberal movements within Islam.


title: Creationism

text: Writing for "The Boston Globe", Drake Bennett noted: "Without a Book of Genesis to account for ... Muslim creationists have little interest in proving that the age of the Earth is measured in the thousands rather than the billions of years, nor do they show much interest in the problem of the dinosaurs. And the idea that animals might evolve into other animals also tends to be less controversial, in part because there are passages of the Koran that seem to support it. But the issue of whether human beings are the product of evolution is just as fraught among Muslims." However, some Muslims, such as Adnan Oktar (also known as Harun Yahya), do not agree that one species can develop from another.


title: Creationism

text: Since the 1980s, Turkey has been a site of strong advocacy for creationism, supported by American adherents.


title: Creationism

text: There are several verses in the Qur'an which some modern writers have interpreted as being compatible with the expansion of the universe, Big Bang and Big Crunch theories:


title: Creationism

text: The Ahmadiyya movement actively promotes evolutionary theory. Ahmadis interpret scripture from the Qur'an to support the concept of macroevolution and give precedence to scientific theories. Furthermore, unlike orthodox Muslims, Ahmadis believe that humans have gradually evolved from different species. Ahmadis regard Adam as being the first Prophet of Godas opposed to him being the first man on Earth. Rather than wholly adopting the theory of natural selection, Ahmadis promote the idea of a "guided evolution," viewing each stage of the evolutionary process as having been selectively woven by God. Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Fourth Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has stated in his magnum opus "Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth" (1998) that evolution did occur but only through God being the One who brings it about. It does not occur itself, according to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.


title: Creationism

text: For Orthodox Jews who seek to reconcile discrepancies between science and the creation myths in the Bible, the notion that science and the Bible should even be reconciled through traditional scientific means is questioned. To these groups, science is as true as the Torah and if there seems to be a problem, epistemological limits are to blame for apparently irreconcilable points. They point to discrepancies between what is expected and what actually is to demonstrate that things are not always as they appear. They note that even the root word for "world" in the Hebrew language—עולם (Olam)—means hidden—נעלם (Neh-Eh-Lahm). Just as they know from the Torah that God created man and trees and the light on its way from the stars in their observed state, so too can they know that the world was created in its over the six days of Creation that reflects progression to its currently-observed state, with the understanding that physical ways to verify this may eventually be identified. This knowledge has been advanced by Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb, former philosophy professor at Johns Hopkins University. Also, relatively old Kabbalistic sources from well before the scientifically apparent age of the universe was first determined are in close concord with modern scientific estimates of the age of the universe, according to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, and based on Sefer Temunah, an early kabbalistic work attributed to the first-century Tanna Nehunya ben HaKanah. Many kabbalists accepted the teachings of the Sefer HaTemunah, including the medieval Jewish scholar Nahmanides, his close student Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, and David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra. Other parallels are derived, among other sources, from Nahmanides, who expounds that there was a Neanderthal-like species with which Adam mated (he did this long before Neanderthals had even been discovered scientifically). Reform Judaism does not take the Torah as a literal text, but rather as a symbolic or open-ended work.


title: Creationism

text: Some contemporary writers such as Rabbi Gedalyah Nadel have sought to reconcile the discrepancy between the account in the Torah, and scientific findings by arguing that each day referred to in the Bible was not 24 hours, but billions of years long. Others claim that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago, but was deliberately made to look as if it was five billion years old, e.g. by being created with ready made fossils. The best known exponent of this approach being Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson Others state that although the world was physically created in six 24-hour days, the Torah accounts can be interpreted to mean that there was a period of billions of years before the six days of creation.


title: Creationism

text: Most vocal literalist creationists are from the US, and strict creationist views are much less common in other developed countries. According to a study published in "Science", a survey of the US, Turkey, Japan and Europe showed that public acceptance of evolution is most prevalent in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden at 80% of the population. There seems to be no significant correlation between believing in evolution and understanding evolutionary science.


title: Creationism

text: A 2009 Nielsen poll showed that 23% of Australians believe "the biblical account of human origins," 42% believe in a "wholly scientific" explanation for the origins of life, while 32% believe in an evolutionary process "guided by God".


title: Creationism

text: A 2013 survey conducted by Auspoll and the Australian Academy of Science found that 80% of Australians believe in evolution (70% believe it is currently occurring, 10% believe in evolution but do not think it is currently occurring), 12% were not sure and 9% stated they do not believe in evolution.


title: Creationism

text: A 2011 Ipsos survey found that 47% of responders in Brazil identified themselves as "creationists and believe that human beings were in fact created by a spiritual force such as the God they believe in and do not believe that the origin of man came from evolving from other species such as apes".


title: Creationism

text: In 2004, IBOPE conducted a poll in Brazil that asked questions about creationism and the teaching of creationism in schools. When asked if creationism should be taught in schools, 89% of people said that creationism should be taught in schools. When asked if the teaching of creationism should replace the teaching of evolution in schools, 75% of people said that the teaching of creationism should replace the teaching of evolution in schools.


title: Creationism

text: A 2012 survey, by Angus Reid Public Opinion revealed that 61 percent of Canadians believe in evolution. The poll asked "Where did human beings come fromdid we start as singular cells millions of year ago and evolve into our present form, or did God create us in his image 10,000 years ago?"


title: Creationism

text: In 2019, a Research Co. poll asked people in Canada if creationism "should be part of the school curriculum in their province". 38% of Canadians said that creationism should be part of the school curriculum, 39% of Canadians said that it should not be part of the school curriculum, and 23% of Canadians were undecided.


title: Creationism

text: In Europe, literalist creationism is more widely rejected, though regular opinion polls are not available. Most people accept that evolution is the most widely accepted scientific theory as taught in most schools. In countries with a Roman Catholic majority, papal acceptance of evolutionary creationism as worthy of study has essentially ended debate on the matter for many people.


title: Creationism

text: In the UK, a 2006 poll on the "origin and development of life", asked participants to choose between three different perspectives on the origin of life: 22% chose creationism, 17% opted for intelligent design, 48% selected evolutionary theory, and the rest did not know. A subsequent 2010 YouGov poll on the correct explanation for the origin of humans found that 9% opted for creationism, 12% intelligent design, 65% evolutionary theory and 13% didn't know. The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, views the idea of teaching creationism in schools as a mistake. In 2009, an Ipsos Mori survey in the United Kingdom found that 54% of Britons agreed with the view: "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."


title: Creationism

text: In Italy, Education Minister Letizia Moratti wanted to retire evolution from the secondary school level; after one week of massive protests, she reversed her opinion.


title: Creationism

text: There continues to be scattered and possibly mounting efforts on the part of religious groups throughout Europe to introduce creationism into public education. In response, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has released a draft report titled "The dangers of creationism in education" on June 8, 2007, reinforced by a further proposal of banning it in schools dated October 4, 2007.


title: Creationism

text: Serbia suspended the teaching of evolution for one week in September 2004, under education minister Ljiljana Čolić, only allowing schools to reintroduce evolution into the curriculum if they also taught creationism. "After a deluge of protest from scientists, teachers and opposition parties" says the BBC report, Čolić's deputy made the statement, "I have come here to confirm Charles Darwin is still alive" and announced that the decision was reversed. Čolić resigned after the government said that she had caused "problems that had started to reflect on the work of the entire government."


title: Creationism

text: Poland saw a major controversy over creationism in 2006, when the Deputy Education Minister, Mirosław Orzechowski, denounced evolution as "one of many lies" taught in Polish schools. His superior, Minister of Education Roman Giertych, has stated that the theory of evolution would continue to be taught in Polish schools, "as long as most scientists in our country say that it is the right theory." Giertych's father, Member of the European Parliament Maciej Giertych, has opposed the teaching of evolution and has claimed that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.


title: Creationism

text: A June 2015 - July 2016 Pew poll of Eastern European countries found that 56% of people from Armenia say that humans and other living things have "Existed in present state since the beginning of time". Armenia is followed by 52% from Bosnia, 42% from Moldova, 37% from Lithuania, 34% from Georgia and Ukraine, 33% from Croatia and Romania, 31% from Bulgaria, 29% from Greece and Serbia, 26% from Russia, 25% from Latvia, 23% from Belarus and Poland, 21% from Estonia and Hungary, and 16% from the Czech Republic.


title: Creationism

text: A 2011 Ipsos survey found that 56% of responders in South Africa identified themselves as "creationists and believe that human beings were in fact created by a spiritual force such as the God they believe in and do not believe that the origin of man came from evolving from other species such as apes".


title: Creationism

text: In 2009, an EBS survey in South Korea found that 63% of people believed that creation and evolution should both be taught in schools simultaneously.


title: Creationism

text: A 2017 poll by Pew Research found that 62% of Americans believe humans have evolved over time and 34% of Americans believe humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. A 2019 Gallup creationism survey found that 40% of adults in the United States inclined to the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings.


title: Creationism

text: According to a 2014 Gallup poll, about 42% of Americans believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Another 31% believe that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,"and 19% believe that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process."


title: Creationism

text: Belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education; of those with postgraduate degrees, 74% accept evolution. In 1987, "Newsweek" reported: "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly.'"


title: Creationism

text: A 2000 poll for People for the American Way found 70% of the US public felt that evolution was compatible with a belief in God.


title: Creationism

text: According to a study published in "Science", between 1985 and 2005 the number of adult North Americans who accept evolution declined from 45% to 40%, the number of adults who reject evolution declined from 48% to 39% and the number of people who were unsure increased from 7% to 21%. Besides the US the study also compared data from 32 European countries, Turkey, and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the US was Turkey (25%).


title: Creationism

text: According to a 2011 Fox News poll, 45% of Americans believe in creationism, down from 50% in a similar poll in 1999. 21% believe in 'the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists' (up from 15% in 1999), and 27% answered that both are true (up from 26% in 1999).


title: Creationism

text: In September 2012, educator and television personality Bill Nye spoke with the Associated Press and aired his fears about acceptance of creationism, believing that teaching children that creationism is the only true answer without letting them understand the way science works will prevent any future innovation in the world of science. In February 2014, Nye defended evolution in the classroom in a debate with creationist Ken Ham on the topic of whether creation is a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era.


title: Creationism

text: In the US, creationism has become centered in the political controversy over creation and evolution in public education, and whether teaching creationism in science classes conflicts with the separation of church and state. Currently, the controversy comes in the form of whether advocates of the intelligent design movement who wish to "Teach the Controversy" in science classes have conflated science with religion.


title: Creationism

text: People for the American Way polled 1500 North Americans about the teaching of evolution and creationism in November and December 1999. They found that most North Americans were not familiar with creationism, and most North Americans had heard of evolution, but many did not fully understand the basics of the theory. The main findings were:


title: Creationism

text: In such political contexts, creationists argue that their particular religiously based origin belief is superior to those of other belief systems, in particular those made through secular or scientific rationale. Political creationists are opposed by many individuals and organizations who have made detailed critiques and given testimony in various court cases that the alternatives to scientific reasoning offered by creationists are opposed by the consensus of the scientific community.


title: Creationism

text: Most Christians disagree with the teaching of creationism as an alternative to evolution in schools. Several religious organizations, among them the Catholic Church, hold that their faith does not conflict with the scientific consensus regarding evolution. The Clergy Letter Project, which has collected more than 13,000 signatures, is an "endeavor designed to demonstrate that religion and science can be compatible."


title: Creationism

text: In his 2002 article "Intelligent Design as a Theological Problem," George Murphy argues against the view that life on Earth, in all its forms, is direct evidence of God's act of creation (Murphy quotes Phillip E. Johnson's claim that he is speaking "of a God who acted openly and left his fingerprints on all the evidence."). Murphy argues that this view of God is incompatible with the Christian understanding of God as "the one revealed in the cross and resurrection of Christ." The basis of this theology is Isaiah 45:15, "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour."


title: Creationism

text: Murphy observes that the execution of a Jewish carpenter by Roman authorities is in and of itself an ordinary event and did not require divine action. On the contrary, for the crucifixion to occur, God had to limit or "empty" himself. It was for this reason that Paul the Apostle wrote, in Philippians 2:5-8:


title: Creationism

text: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.


title: Creationism

text: Murphy concludes that,Just as the Son of God limited himself by taking human form and dying on a cross, God limits divine action in the world to be in accord with rational laws which God has chosen. This enables us to understand the world on its own terms, but it also means that natural processes hide God from scientific observation.For Murphy, a theology of the cross requires that Christians accept a "methodological" naturalism, meaning that one cannot invoke God to explain natural phenomena, while recognizing that such acceptance does not require one to accept a "metaphysical" naturalism, which proposes that nature is all that there is.


title: Creationism

text: The Jesuit priest George Coyne has stated that it is "unfortunate that, especially here in America, creationism has come to mean...some literal interpretation of Genesis." He argues that "...Judaic-Christian faith is radically creationist, but in a totally different sense. It is rooted in belief that everything depends on God, or better, all is a gift from God."


title: Creationism

text: Other Christians have expressed qualms about teaching creationism. In March 2006, then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, stated his discomfort about teaching creationism, saying that creationism was "a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories." He also said: "My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it." The views of the Episcopal Churcha major American-based branch of the Anglican Communionon teaching creationism resemble those of Williams.


title: Creationism

text: The National Science Teachers Association is opposed to teaching creationism as a science, as is the Association for Science Teacher Education, the National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Anthropological Association, the American Geosciences Institute, the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, and numerous other professional teaching and scientific societies.


title: Creationism

text: In April 2010, the American Academy of Religion issued "Guidelines for Teaching About Religion in K‐12 Public Schools in the United States", which included guidance that creation science or intelligent design should not be taught in science classes, as "Creation science and intelligent design represent worldviews that fall outside of the realm of science that is defined as (and limited to) a method of inquiry based on gathering observable and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." However, they, as well as other "worldviews that focus on speculation regarding the origins of life represent another important and relevant form of human inquiry that is appropriately studied in literature or social sciences courses. Such study, however, must include a diversity of worldviews representing a variety of religious and philosophical perspectives and must avoid privileging one view as more legitimate than others."


title: Creationism

text: Randy Moore and Sehoya Cotner, from the biology program at the University of Minnesota, reflect on the relevance of teaching creationism in the article "The Creationist Down the Hall: Does It Matter When Teachers Teach Creationism?", in which they write: "Despite decades of science education reform, numerous legal decisions declaring the teaching of creationism in public-school science classes to be unconstitutional, overwhelming evidence supporting evolution, and the many denunciations of creationism as nonscientific by professional scientific societies, creationism remains popular throughout the United States."


title: Creationism

text: Science is a system of knowledge based on observation, empirical evidence, and the development of theories that yield testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena. By contrast, creationism is often based on literal interpretations of the narratives of particular religious texts. Creationist beliefs involve purported forces that lie outside of nature, such as supernatural intervention, and often do not allow predictions at all. Therefore, these can neither be confirmed nor disproved by scientists. However, many creationist beliefs can be framed as testable predictions about phenomena such as the age of the Earth, its geological history and the origins, distributions and relationships of living organisms found on it. Early science incorporated elements of these beliefs, but as science developed these beliefs were gradually falsified and were replaced with understandings based on accumulated and reproducible evidence that often allows the accurate prediction of future results.


title: Creationism

text: Some scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, consider science and religion to be two compatible and complementary fields, with authorities in distinct areas of human experience, so-called non-overlapping magisteria. This view is also held by many theologians, who believe that ultimate origins and meaning are addressed by religion, but favor verifiable scientific explanations of natural phenomena over those of creationist beliefs. Other scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, reject the non-overlapping magisteria and argue that, in disproving literal interpretations of creationists, the scientific method also undermines religious texts as a source of truth. Irrespective of this diversity in viewpoints, since creationist beliefs are not supported by empirical evidence, the scientific consensus is that any attempt to teach creationism as science should be rejected.


title: Ed Speleers

text: Edward John Speleers (born 7 April 1988) is an English actor and producer. He is best known for playing the title role in the 2006 film "Eragon", the antagonist character Stephen Bonnet in the TV series "Outlander", as well as James "Jimmy" Kent in the TV series "Downton Abbey". Speleers has been nominated for both the Saturn Awards, as Best Young Actor, and the British Academy Film Awards, for a short film he co-produced.


title: Ed Speleers

text: Speleers was born at St Richard's Hospital, Chichester, West Sussex, England. He is of Belgian descent. His parents divorced when he was three, with his mother residing in Spain and his father in London. He has two older half brothers. While still in school, Speleers performed in school productions such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Richard III". In addition to acting, Speleers wrote a play that was performed at Eastbourne College, in Sussex, where he attended. Extraordinarily controversial, "Retribution" dealt with the subject of paedophilia and was met with stunned reactions. Speleers completed his education in 2006.


title: Ed Speleers

text: Speleers' first professional role in 2006 was the lead in 20th Century Fox's screen version of Christopher Paolini's hit book "Eragon". Before landing the role of Eragon, he auditioned for various roles, including Peter Pevensie in "", which he lost to William Moseley. His next role, in 2008, was Jimmy Penwarden on the British prime time series "Echo Beach". He also appeared in the comedy "Moving Wallpaper" and an episode of "Moving Wallpaper: The Mole", which many saw as a parody of "Echo Beach".


title: Ed Speleers

text: 2009 saw Speleers tackle the role of Robin Cecil Byng in the Japanese television miniseries "Jiro Shirasu: Man of Honor," which highlighted the intermediary between American and Japanese negotiators at the conclusion of World War II. The next year, Speleers played the role of Jason Grint in the made-for-television fantasy-adventure film "Witchville" and starred in director Aimee Powell's short film "Deathless". Continuing with short films in 2011, Speleers appeared in director Marion Pilowski's short "The Ride" and Julian Gilbey's short "A Lonely Place to Die".


title: Ed Speleers

text: In 2012, Speleers starred as Jamie in Andy de Emmony's comedy horror film "Love Bite," alongside Jessica Szohr and Timothy Spall. He cast in the film "A Dead Man in Deptford", based upon Anthony Burgess' novel of the same name, but the film was never completed. That same year Speleers was cast in the recurring role of Jimmy Kent in the award-winning ITV series "Downton Abbey".


title: Ed Speleers

text: The short film "Turncoat" (2013), from Dark Matter productions, featured Speleers as Nathan Reese. He then starred as Sam in 2014's thriller "Plastic", which was written and directed by Julian Gilbey for Gateway Films. Production was shot in Britain, Miami and Brunei from January 2013. On 12 March 2014 it was reported that Speleers was among five actors being considered for a lead role in "," but was cut during the casting process"."


title: Ed Speleers

text: In 2015, Speleers had a small role in the BBC's historical drama mini-series "Wolf Hall" as Edward Seymour, brother of Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour. He also played a leading role in the direct-to-DVD werewolf horror film "Howl," as a young train conductor overseeing the final London train. That same year, Speleers guest starred in the BBC One six-part mini-series "Partners in Crime", an adaptation of two of Agatha Christie's novels, which focused on crime-solving couple Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Speleers appeared in three episodes based on the story "N or M?", in the role of Carl Denim. He went on to portray Greg in director Omer Fast's psychological thriller "Remainder".


title: Ed Speleers

text: In 2016, he played the role of Slean in ITV's epic fantasy drama television series from, "". He had a supporting role in Disney's fantasy adventure sequel "Alice Through the Looking Glass" from director by James Bobin. The following year he starred in the biopic "Breathe", opposite Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy. The film, actor Andy Serkis' directoral debut, follows the experiences of paraplegic Robin Cavendish, who is recognized as having helped pioneer the development of wheelchairs equipped with mechanical lungs.


title: Ed Speleers

text: In 2017, Speleers was a producer on Barnaby Blackburn's short film "Wale". The film, which centers on racial prejudices in Britain today, was nominated for a British Academy Film Awards in 2018 in the Short Film category. In late 2017, Speleers was confirmed to appear in season four and five of Starz's time-travel drama series "Outlander" as Irish smuggler and pirate Stephen Bonnet.


title: Ed Speleers

text: In 2018, Speleers starred in the dark comedy-horror film "Zoo", which centers on a couple in crisis and attempting to reconcile during a zombie pandemic. He went on to feature in Lars Von Trier's psychological thriller "The House That Jack Built", which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. On 20 August 2018, Speleers made his stage premiere in the play "Rain Man", portraying the lead role of Charlie Babbitt. The play, based upon the film of the same, name, was directed by Jonathan O'Boyle and has toured various theatres throughout the United Kingdom.


title: Ed Speleers

text: Romantic comedy "For Love or Money" featured Speleers as Johnny, opposite Robert Kazinsky and Samantha Barks, in 2019. He is co-starring in the upcoming romantic comedy "Irish Wish" alongside Lindsay Lohan.


title: Box office

text: A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a synonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an arena or a stadium.


title: Box office

text: "Box office" business can be measured in the terms of the number of tickets sold or the amount of money raised by ticket sales (revenue). The projection and analysis of these earnings is greatly important for the creative industries and often a source of interest for fans. This is predominant in the Hollywood movie industry.


title: Box office

text: To determine if a movie made a profit, it is not correct to directly compare the box office gross with the production budget, because the movie theater keeps nearly half of the gross on average. The split varies from movie to movie, and the percentage for the distributor is generally higher in early weeks. Usually the distributor gets a percentage of the revenue after first deducting a "house allowance" or "house nut". It is also common that the distributor gets either a percentage of the gross revenue, or a higher percentage of the revenue after deducting the nut, whichever is larger.


title: Box office

text: The distributor's share of the box office gross is often referred to as the "distributor rentals", especially for box office reporting of older films.


title: Box office

text: The name box office was used at the Globe Theatre, owned by William Shakespeare, and also in wider Elizabethan theatre. Admission was collected in a tudor money box by a ticket seller at the entrance to the theatre. While the name box office was used in Elizabethan theatre, there is disagreement around whether the term originates from this time.


title: Box office

text: The term box office was being widely used from at least 1786, deriving from the office from which theatre boxes were being sold. The term box office was being used to describe total sales from at least 1904.


title: Box office

text: The following is film industry specific terminology used by box office reporters such as "Variety" and Box Office Mojo. For films released in North America, box office figures are usually divided between domestic, meaning the United States and Canada, and foreign which includes all other countries. Weekly box office figures are now normally taken to be from Friday through Thursday to allow for the fact that most films are officially released in the United States on a Friday. With "Variety" being published for many years every Wednesday, most weekly box office figures they reported from the 1920s to the 1990s were for the week from Thursday to Wednesday. A large component of the weekly gross is the weekend box office. Historically, this was reported as the box office receipts around Friday through Sunday plus any public holidays close to the weekend, such as a 4-day Memorial Day weekend, however, with the increased regularity of reporting of box office figures, a comparable 3-day figure for the Friday to Sunday is now also used. In particular, the weekend box office for the initial week of release, or opening weekend, is often widely reported. (See List of biggest opening weekends.)


title: Box office

text: Theaters is the number of theaters in which the movie is showing. Since a single theater may show a movie on multiple screens, the total number of screens or engagements is used as another measure. The theaters measure is used to classify whether a film is in wide release, meaning at least 600 theaters, or limited release which is less than 600 theaters. Occasionally, a film may achieve wide release after an initial limited release; "Little Miss Sunshine" is an example of this.


title: Box office

text: Gross refers to gross earnings. On average, the movie's distributor receives a little more than half of the final gross (often referred to as the rentals) with the remainder going to the exhibitor (i.e., movie theater).


title: Box office

text: Multiple is the ratio of a film's total gross to that of the opening weekend. A film that earns $20 million on its opening weekend and finishes with $80 million has a multiple of 4. From 2004 to 2014, films viewers graded as A+ on CinemaScore had a 4.8 multiple, while films graded as F had a 2.2 multiple. most major Hollywood films have a multiple of about 2.5.


title: Box office

text: Admissions refers to the number of tickets sold at the box office. In countries such as France, box office reporting was historically reported in terms of admissions, with rules regulated by the government and fines issued if exhibitors failed to report the data. Other countries which historically reported box office figures in terms of admissions include European countries such as Germany, Italy, and Spain, the Soviet Union, and South Korea. Box Office Mojo estimates the North American ticket sales by dividing the domestic box office gross by the average ticket price (ATP) of a given year, a method that Box Office India uses to estimate Indian footfalls (ticket sales). See "List of films by box office admissions" for the films with the highest known estimated ticket sales.


title: Box office

text: For lists of films which are major box-office hits, see "List of highest-grossing films", "List of films by box office admissions" and "Lists of highest-grossing films". Films that are considered to have been very unsuccessful at the box office are called box office bombs or box office flops. For a list of these films, see "List of box office bombs".


title: Box office

text: There are numerous websites that monitor box-office receipts, such as "BoxOffice", Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, A Box Office, Box Office India, Koimoi and ShowBIZ Data. These sites provide box office information for hundreds of movies. Data for older movies is often incomplete due to the way box office reporting evolved, especially in the U.S., and the availability of information prior to the introduction of the internet.


title: Box office

text: "Variety" started reporting box office results by theatre on March 3, 1922 to give exhibitors around the country information on a film's performance on Broadway, which was often where first run showings of a film were held. In addition to New York City, they also endeavoured to include all of the key cities in the U.S. in future and initially also reported results for 10 other cities including Chicago and Los Angeles.


title: Box office

text: In 1929, the first issue of "The Motion Picture Almanac" was released and included a list of the top 104 grossing films for the past year. In 1932, "Variety" published the studios' top-grossing films of the year and has maintained this tradition annually since. In 1937, BoxOffice magazine began publishing box office reports. Beginning in the 1930s, BoxOffice magazine published a Barometer issue in January, which reported the performance of movies for the year expressed as percentages.


title: Box office

text: In 1946, "Variety" started to publish a weekly National Box Office survey on page 3 indicating the performance of the week's hits and flops based on the box office results of 25 key U.S. cities.


title: Box office

text: Later in 1946, "Variety" published a list of All-Time Top Grossers with a list of films that had achieved or gave promise of earning $4,000,000 or more in domestic (U.S. and Canada) theatrical rentals. This became a leading source of data for a film's performance. "Variety" would publish an updated all-time list annually for over 50 years, normally in their anniversary edition each January. The anniversary edition would also normally contain the list of the top performing films of the year.


title: Box office

text: In the late 1960s, "Variety" used an IBM 360 computer to collate the grosses from their weekly reports of 22 to 24 U.S. cities from January 1, 1968. The data came from up to 800 theatres which represented around 5% of the U.S. cinema population at the time but around one-third of the total U.S. box office grosses. In 1969, "Variety" started to publish a list of the top 50 grossing films each week. "The Love Bug" was the number one on the first chart published for the week ending April 16, 1969. The chart was discontinued in 1990.


title: Box office

text: In 1974, Nat Fellman founded Exhibitor Relations Co., the first company set up to track box office grosses, which it collected from the studios. Two years later, Marcy Polier, an employee of the Mann theater chain, set up Centralized Grosses to collate U.S. daily box office data on a centralized basis from theaters rather than each theater chain collating their own numbers from other theater chains. The company later became National Gross Service then Entertainment Data, Inc. (EDI).


title: Box office

text: Except for disclosures by the studios on very successful films, total domestic (U.S. and Canada) box office gross information for films was not readily available until National Gross Service started to collate this data around 1981. The collation of grosses led to wider reporting of domestic box office grosses for films. Arthur D. Murphy, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant at "Variety" was one of the first to organize and chart that information and report it in a meaningful form. During the 1980s, Daily "Variety" started to publish a weekly chart of the domestic box office grosses of films collated from the studios as compared to the Top 50 chart in "Variety" which was based on a sample of theatre grosses from key markets.


title: Box office

text: Gradually the focus of a film's performance became its box office gross rather than the rentals that "Variety" continued to report annually. Prior to the tracking of these grosses, domestic or worldwide box office grosses is not available for many earlier films so the only domestic or worldwide data available is still often the rental figures.


title: Box office

text: Murphy started to publish "Art Murphy's Box Office Register" annually from 1984 detailing U.S. box office grosses.


title: Box office

text: In 1984, EDI started to report Canadian grosses as well and by 1985 was reporting data for 15,000 screens. In 1987, EDI set up a database of box office information which included data on certain films back to 1970. By 1991, all U.S. studios had agreed to share their complete data reports with EDI. In 1990, EDI opened an office in the UK, moved into Germany in 1993 and Spain in 1995 reporting box office data for those markets. EDI were acquired by ACNielsen Corporation in 1997 for $26 million and became Nielsen EDI.


title: Box office

text: By the 1990s, "Daily Variety" started to report studio's weekend estimates from Sundays on Monday mornings which led to other media reporting the data earlier. When "Entertainment Weekly" was launched in 1990 it started to publish the top 10 box office weekend lists from Exhibitor Relations and the company was also supplying box office data to companies such as the "Los Angeles Times", CNN and the Associated Press.


title: Box office

text: In 1994, "Variety" published their first annual global box office chart showing the top 100 grossing films internationally for the prior year.


title: Box office

text: On August 7, 1998, Box Office Mojo was launched by Brandon Gray and in 1999 he started posting the Friday grosses sourced from Exhibitor Relations so that they were publicly available for free online on Saturdays and posted the Sunday estimates on Sundays. In July 2008, Box Office Mojo was purchased by Amazon.com through its subsidiary, IMDb.


title: Box office

text: Rentrak started tracking box office data from point of sale in 2001 and started to rival EDI in providing the studios with data. In December 2009, Rentrak acquired Nielsen EDI for $15 million, and became the sole provider of worldwide box office ticket sales revenue and attendance information which is used by many of the websites noted above.


title: Box office

text: On October 23, 2019, Box Office Mojo unveiled a dramatic redesign resembling IMDb, and was rebranded as "Box Office Mojo by IMDbPro" with some of the content move to the subscription based IMDbPro.


title: Box office

text: Box office reporting paused for the first time since its inception on March 19, 2020, as nearly all theaters nationwide were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Only drive-in theaters, which are typically not included in box office reporting, remained open.


title: Box office

text: The average ticket price (ATP) is the average cost to purchase a film ticket at the box office in any given year. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the ATP is "calculated as the total revenues generated from tickets sales divided by the number of feature film tickets sold during the year of reference."


title: Box office

text: Box-office figures are reported in the form of either gross receipts or distributor rentals, the latter being especially true of older films. Commonly mistaken for home video revenue, the rentals are the distributor's share of the film's theatrical revenue i.e. the box office gross less the exhibitor's cut. Historically, the rental price averaged at 30–40% when the distributors owned the theater chains, equating to just over a third of the gross being paid to the distributor of the film. In the modern marketplace, rental fees can vary greatly—depending on a number of factors—although the films from the major studios average out at 43%.


title: Guardian angel

text: A guardian angel is a type of angel that is assigned to protect and guide a particular person, group or nation. Belief in tutelary beings can be traced throughout all antiquity. The idea of angels that guard over people played a major role in Ancient Judaism. In Christianity, the hierarchy of angels was extensively developed in the 5th century by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The theology of angels and tutelary spirits has undergone many changes since the 5th century. The belief is that guardian angels serve to protect whichever person God assigns them to.


title: Guardian angel

text: The idea of a guardian angel is central to the 15th-century book "The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage" by Abraham of Worms, a German Cabalist. In 1897, this book was translated into English by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918), a co-founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who styled the guardian angel as the Holy Guardian Angel.


title: Guardian angel

text: Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), the founder of the esoteric religion Thelema, considered the "Holy Guardian Angel" to be representative of one's truest divine nature and the equivalent of the "Genius" of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Augoeides of Iamblichus, the Atman of Hinduism, and the Daimon of the ancient Greeks. Following the teachings of the Golden Dawn, Crowley refined their rituals which were intended to facilitate the ability to establish contact with one's guardian angel.


title: Guardian angel

text: The guardian angel concept is present in the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and its development is well marked. These books described God's angels as his ministers who carried out his behests, and who were at times given special commissions, regarding men and mundane affairs.


title: Guardian angel

text: In Genesis 18–19, angels not only acted as the executors of God's wrath against the cities of the plain, but they delivered Lot from danger; in Exodus 32:34, God said to Moses: "my angel shall go before thee." The story of Tobias concerns the angel Archangel Raphael guiding and aiding its primary character. Psalm 91:11 reads: "For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways" (Cf. Psalm 33:8 and 34:5 — 34:7 and 35:6 in Protestant Bibles).


title: Guardian angel

text: The belief that angels can be guides and intercessors for men can be found in Job 33:23-26, and in Daniel 10:13 angels seem to be assigned to certain countries. In this latter case, the "prince of the kingdom of Persia" contends with Gabriel. The same verse mentions "Michael, one of the chief princes".


title: Guardian angel

text: In rabbinic literature, the rabbis expressed the notion that there are indeed guardian angels appointed by God to watch over people.


title: Guardian angel

text: Lailah is an angel of the night in charge of conception and pregnancy. Lailah serves as a guardian angel throughout a person's life and at death, leads the soul into the afterlife.


title: Guardian angel

text: According to rabbi Leo Trepp, in late Judaism, the belief developed that, "the people have a heavenly representative, a guardian angel. Every human being has a guardian angel. Previously the term `Malakh', angel, simply meant messenger of God."


title: Guardian angel

text: Chabad believes that people might indeed have guardian angels. For Chabad, God watches over people and makes decisions directly with their prayers and it is in this context that the guardian angels are sent back and forth as emissaries to aid in this task. Thus, they are not prayed to directly, but the angels are part of the workings of how the prayer and response comes about.


title: Guardian angel

text: In the New Testament the concept of guardian angel may be noted. Angels are everywhere the intermediaries between God and man; and Christ set a seal upon the Old Testament teaching: "See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10). Guardian angels work both for single persons and for communities of people. and refers of the angels of the seven churches of Asia who work in the role of their guardians.


title: Guardian angel

text: Other examples in the New Testament are the angel who succoured Christ in the garden, and the angel who delivered St. Peter from prison. In Acts 12:12-15, after Peter had been escorted out of prison by an angel, he went to the home of "Mary the mother of John, also called Mark". The servant girl, Rhoda, recognized his voice and ran back to tell the group that Peter was there. However, the group replied: "It must be his angel"' (12:15). With this scriptural sanction, Peter's angel was the most commonly depicted guardian angel in art, and was normally shown in images of the subject, most famously Raphael's fresco of the "Deliverance of Saint Peter" in the Vatican.


title: Guardian angel

text: Hebrews 1:14 says: "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to minister for them, who shall receive the inheritance of salvation?" In this view, the function of the guardian angel is to lead people to the Kingdom of Heaven.


title: Guardian angel

text: According to Saint Jerome, the concept of guardian angels is in the "mind of the Church". He stated: "how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it".


title: Guardian angel

text: The first Christian theologian to outline a specific scheme for guardian angels was Honorius of Autun in the 12th century. He said that every soul was assigned a guardian angel the moment it was put into a body. Scholastic theologians augmented and ordered the taxonomy of angelic guardians. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Honorius and believed that it was the lowest order of angels who served as guardians, and his view was most successful in popular thought, but Duns Scotus said that any angel is bound by duty and obedience to the Divine Authority to accept the mission to which that angel is assigned. In the 15th century, the Feast of the Guardian Angels was added to the official calendar of Catholic holidays.


title: Guardian angel

text: In his March 31, 1997 Regina Caeli address, Pope John Paul II referred to the concept of guardian angels and concluded the address with the statement: "Let us invoke the Queen of angels and saints, that she may grant us, supported by our guardian angels, to be authentic witnesses to the Lord's paschal mystery".


title: Guardian angel

text: In his 2014 homily for the Feast of Holy Guardian Angels, October 2, Pope Francis told those gathered for daily Mass to be like children who pay attention to their "traveling companion". "No one journeys alone and no one should think that they are alone", the Pope said. During the Morning Meditation in the chapel of Santa Marta, the Pope noted that oftentimes, we have the feeling that "I should do this, this is not right, be careful." This, he said, "is the voice of" our guardian angel. "According to Church tradition we all have an angel with us, who guards us..." The Pope instructed each, "Do not rebel, follow his advice!" The Pope urged that this "doctrine on the angels" not be considered "a little imaginative". It is rather one of "truth". It is "what Jesus, what God said: 'I send an angel before you, to guard you, to accompany you on the way, so you will not make a mistake'".


title: Guardian angel

text: Pope Francis concluded with a series of questions so that each one can examine their own conscience: "How is my relationship with my guardian angel? Do I listen to him? Do I bid him good day in the morning? Do I tell him: 'guard me while I sleep?' Do I speak with him? Do I ask his advice? ...Each one of us can do so in order to evaluate “the relationship with this angel that the Lord has sent to guard me and to accompany me on the path, and who always beholds the face of the Father who is in heaven."


title: Guardian angel

text: There was an old Irish custom that suggested including in bedtime prayers a request for the Blessed Mother to tell one the name of their guardian angel, and supposedly within a few days one would "know" the name by which they could address their angel. An old Dominican tradition encouraged each novice to give a name to their guardian angel so that they could speak to him by name and thus feel closer and more friendly with him. The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments discourages assigning names to angels beyond those revealed in scripture: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.


title: Guardian angel

text: In Cardinal Newman's 1865 poem "The Dream of Gerontius", the departed soul is met by his guardian angel.


title: Guardian angel

text: According to Aquinas, "On this road man is threatened by many dangers both from within and without, and therefore as guardians are appointed for men who have to pass by an unsafe road, so an angel is assigned to each man as long as he is a wayfarer." By means of an angel, God is said to introduce images and suggestions leading a person to do what is right.


title: Guardian angel

text: Father Giovangiuseppe Califano recounted how, one day, a newly appointed bishop confessed to Pope John XXIII "that he could not sleep at night due to an anxiety which was caused by the responsibility of his office". "The pope told him, ‘You know, I also thought the same when I was elected pope. But one day, I dreamed about my guardian angel, and it told me not to take everything so seriously.’" Pope John attributed the idea of calling Second Vatican Council to an inspiration from his guardian angel.


title: Guardian angel

text: Saint Gemma Galgani, a Roman Catholic mystic, stated that she had interacted with and spoken with her guardian angel. Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was known to instruct his parishioners to send him their guardian angel to communicate a trouble or issue to him when they could not travel to get to him or another urgency existed.


title: Guardian angel

text: "Of the Intercession and Invocation of Angels and Saints", printed in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, held that "many learned Protestants think it probable that each of the faithful, at least, has a guardian angel. It seems certainly proved by Scripture. Zanchius says that all the Fathers held this opinion". Building upon sacred scripture and the teachings of the Church Fathers, Richard Montagu, the Anglican Bishop of Norwich in the 17th century, stated that "It is an opinion received, and hath been long, that if not every man, each son of Adam, yet sure each Christian man regenerate by water and the Holy Ghost, at least from the day of his regeneration and new birth unto God, if not from the time of his coming into the world, hath by God's appointment and assignation an Angel Guardian to attend upon him at all assayes, in all his ways, at his going forth, at his coming home".


title: Guardian angel

text: As such, before the Eastern Orthodox liturgy of the Communion of the Faithful, a prayer asks "For an angel of peace, a faithful guide, a guardian of our souls and bodies, let us entreat the Lord. Amen."


title: Guardian angel

text: The Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer found in Martin Luther's Small Catechism include the supplication "Let your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me". Donald Schneider, a Lutheran priest, states that Martin Luther may have based these prayers on , which includes a verse stating “For [God] will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone”.


title: Guardian angel

text: John W. Hanner, a Methodist minister and theologian, wrote on the topic of guardian angels in his "Angelic Study", stating that:


title: Guardian angel

text: In May and June 1743, Methodists experienced persecution in Wednesbury and Walsall and the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was threatened with death by a mob who dragged him in the rain; however, "Wesley escaped unharmed" and he "believed that he had been protected by his guardian angel".


title: Guardian angel

text: In "Reformed Dogmatics", Heinrich Heppe states that some Reformed theologians espoused the view of guardian angels, including Bucan, who taught:


title: Guardian angel

text: There is a similar Islamic belief in the Mu'aqqibat. According to many Muslims, each person has two guardian angels, in front of and behind him, while the two recorders are located to the right and left.


title: Guardian angel

text: The "Ashvins" (), also known as "Ashwini Kumara" and "Asvinau", are Hindu twin gods associated with medicine, health, dawn and sciences. In the "Rigveda", they are described as youthful divine twin horsemen, travelling in a chariot drawn by horses that are never weary, and portrayed as guardian deities that safeguard and rescue people by aiding them in various situations.


title: Guardian angel

text: The Ashvins are generally mentioned as the sons of the sun god Surya and his wife Sanjna, but there are some varying accounts. The goddess Sūryā is described as the common wife of the "Ashvins" and they are associated with the dawn goddess Ushas as her close companions. In the epic "Mahabharata" the Pandava twins Nakula and Sahadeva were the spiritual children of the "Ashvins".


title: Guardian angel

text: Also known as "Arda Fravaš" ('Holy Guardian Angels'). Each person is accompanied by a guardian angel, which acts as a guide throughout life. They originally patrolled the boundaries of the ramparts of heaven, but volunteer to descend to earth to stand by individuals to the end of their days.


title: Guardian angel

text: The idea of a Holy Guardian Angel is central to the book "The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage" by Abraham of Worms, a German Christian Cabalist who wrote the book on ceremonial magic during the 15th century and which was later translated by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, a co-founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He elaborated on this earlier work, giving it extensive magical notes. In Mathers' publication of "The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage", he writes:


title: Guardian angel

text: The Enochian system of 16th-century occultist John Dee discusses the guardian angel. In this dialog between Dee and the angel Jubanladace on p. 18, Cotton Appendix XLVI 1, the angel says the following:


title: Guardian angel

text: Having studied "The Book of Abramelin" during his time with the Golden Dawn, author and occultist Aleister Crowley adapted the concept of the Holy Guardian Angel from Renaissance magic (see above) and made it central to the philosophy and practices of Thelema, popularizing it in the process.


title: Guardian angel

text: In his earlier writings, Crowley states that the Holy Guardian Angel is the "silent self," the equivalent of the Genius of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Augoeides of Iamblichus, the Atman of Hinduism, and the Daimon of the ancient Greeks. In his late sixties, when composing "Magick Without Tears", he states that the Holy Guardian Angel is not one's 'self,' but rather a discrete and independent being, who may have been previously human.


title: Guardian angel

text: Within the system of Aleister Crowley's magical Order A∴A∴, one of the two most important goals is to consciously connect with one's Holy Guardian Angel, representative of one's truest divine nature: a process termed "Knowledge and Conversation".


title: Guardian angel

text: Crowley suggested that the Abramelin procedure was not the only way to achieve success in this endeavour:


title: Guardian angel

text: Since the operation described in "Abramelin" is complex and requires time and resources not available to many people, Crowley wanted to provide a more accessible method. While at the Abbey of Thelema in Italy, he wrote "Liber Samekh" based on the Bornless Ritual, a ritual designed as an example of how one may attain the knowledge and conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel. In his notes to this ritual, Crowley sums up the key to success: "INVOKE OFTEN."


title: Guardian angel

text: Another detailed description of the general operation is given in "The Vision and the Voice" in the eighth Aethyr and is also described in "Liber 8".


title: Guardian angel

text: Guardian angels were often considered to be matched by a personal demon who countered the angel's efforts, especially in popular medieval drama such as morality plays like the 15th-century "The Castle of Perseverance". In Christopher Marlowe's play "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus", c. 1592, Faustus has a "Good Angel" and "Bad Angel" who offer competing advice (Act 2, scene 1, etc.).


title: Guardian angel

text: Guardian angels appear in literary works of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Later the Anglican English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), stated his belief in "Religio Medici" (part 1, paragraph 33):


title: Guardian angel

text: By the 19th century, the guardian angel was no longer viewed in Anglophone lands as an intercessory figure, but rather as a force protecting the believer from performing sin. A parody appears in Lord Byron's 1819 poem "Don Juan": "Her guardian angel had given up his garrison" (Canto I, xvii).


title: Crown of thorns

text: According to the New Testament, a woven crown of thorns ( or ) was placed on the head of Jesus during the events leading up to his crucifixion. It was one of the instruments of the Passion, employed by Jesus' captors both to cause him pain and to mock his claim of authority. It is mentioned in the gospels of Matthew (Matthew 27:29), Mark (Mark 15:17) and John (John 19:2, 19:5), and is often alluded to by the early Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen and others, along with being referenced in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter.


title: Crown of thorns

text: Since at least around the year 400 AD, a relic believed by many to be the crown of thorns has been venerated. In 1238, the Latin Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople yielded the relic to French King Louis IX. It was kept in the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris until 15 April 2019, when it was rescued from a fire and moved to the Louvre Museum.


title: Crown of thorns

text: The three Biblical gospels that mention the crown of thorns do not say what happened to it after the crucifixion. The oldest known mention of the crown already being adored as a relic was made by Paulinus of Nola, writing after 409, who refers to the crown as a relic that was adored by the faithful ("Epistle Macarius" in Migne, , LXI, 407). Cassiodorus () speaks of the crown of thorns among other relics which were "the glory" of the city of Jerusalem. "There", he says, "we may behold the thorny crown, which was only set upon the head of Our Redeemer in order that all the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken" (Migne, LXX, 621). When Gregory of Tours in avers that the thorns in the crown still looked green, a freshness which was miraculously renewed each day, he does not much strengthen the historical authenticity of a relic he had not seen, but the "Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem" (a short text dated to about 530 AD), and the "itinerary" of Antoninus of Piacenza (6th century) clearly state that the crown of thorns was then shown in the "Basilica of Mount Zion," although there is uncertainty about the actual site to which the authors refer. From these fragments of evidence and others of later date (the "Pilgrimage" of the monk Bernard shows that the relic was still at Mount Zion in 870), it is shown that a purported crown of thorns was venerated at Jerusalem in the first centuries of the common era.


title: Crown of thorns

text: Some time afterwards, the crown was purportedly moved to Constantinople, then capital of the empire. Historian Francois de Mély supposed that the whole crown was transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople not much before 1063. In any case, Emperor Justinian is stated to have given a thorn to Germain, Bishop of Paris, which was long preserved at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, while the Empress Irene, in 798 or 802, sent Charlemagne several thorns which were deposited by him at Aachen. Eight of these are said to have been there at the consecration of the basilica of Aachen; the subsequent history of several of them can be traced without difficulty: four were given to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne in 877 by Charles the Bald; Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, sent one to the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan in 927, on the occasion of certain marriage negotiations, and it eventually found its way to Malmesbury Abbey; another was presented to a Spanish princess about 1160; and again another was taken to Andechs Abbey in Germany in the year 1200.


title: Crown of thorns

text: In 1238, Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, anxious to obtain support for his tottering empire, offered the crown of thorns to Louis IX of France. It was then in the hands of the Venetians as security for a great loan of 13,134 gold pieces, yet it was redeemed and conveyed to Paris where Louis IX built the Sainte-Chapelle, completed in 1248, to receive it. The relic stayed there until the French Revolution, when, after finding a home for a while in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Concordat of 1801 restored it to the Catholic Church, and it was deposited in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.


title: Crown of thorns

text: The relic that the church received is a twisted circlet of rushes of "Juncus balticus", a plant native to maritime areas of northern Britain, the Baltic region, and Scandinavia; the thorns preserved in various other reliquaries are of "Ziziphus spina-christi", a plant native to Africa and Southern and Western Asia, and had allegedly been removed from the Crown and kept in separate reliquaries since soon after they arrived in France. New reliquaries were provided for the relic, one commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, another, in jeweled rock crystal and more suitably Gothic, was made to the designs of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In 2001, when the surviving treasures from the Sainte-Chapelle were exhibited at the Louvre, the chaplet was solemnly presented every Friday at Notre-Dame. Pope John Paul II translated it personally to Sainte-Chapelle during World Youth Day. The relic can be seen only on the first Friday of every month, when it is exhibited for a special veneration Mass, as well as each Friday of Lent (see also Feast of the Crown of Thorns).


title: Crown of thorns

text: Members of the Paris Fire Brigade saved the relic during the Notre-Dame de Paris fire of April 15, 2019.


title: Crown of thorns

text: Not all of the reputed holy thorns are considered to be "first-class" relics (relics held to be of the original crown). In Roman Catholic tradition, a relic of the first class is a part of the body of a saint or, in this case, any of the objects used in the Crucifixion that carried the blood of Christ; a relic of the second class is anything known to have been touched or used by a saint; a relic of the third class is a devotional object touched to a first-class relic and, usually, formally blessed as a sacramental.


title: Crown of thorns

text: M. de Mély was able to enumerate more than 700. The statement in one medieval obituary that Peter de Averio gave to the cathedral of Angers, ("one of the spines which were attached to the thorny crown of our Redeemer") indicates that many of the thorns were relics of the third class—objects touched to a relic of the first class, in this case some part of the crown itself. Again, even in comparatively modern times, it is not always easy to trace the history of these objects of devotion, as first-class relics were often divided and any number of authentic third-class relics may exist.


title: Crown of thorns

text: Prior to the Seventh Crusade, Louis IX of France bought from Baldwin II of Constantinople what was venerated as Jesus' Crown of Thorns. It is kept in Paris to this day, in the Louvre Museum. Individual thorns were given by the French monarch to other European royals: the Holy Thorn Reliquary in the British Museum, for example, containing a single thorn, was made in the 1390s for the French prince Jean, duc de Berry, who is documented as receiving more than one thorn from Charles V and VI, his brother and nephew.


title: Crown of thorns

text: Two "holy thorns" were venerated, one at St. Michael's church in Ghent, the other at Stonyhurst College, both professing to be thorns given by Mary, Queen of Scots to Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland.


title: Crown of thorns

text: The appearance of the crown of thorns in art, notably upon the head of Christ in representations of the Crucifixion or the subject "Ecce Homo", arises after the time of St. Louis and the building of the Sainte-Chapelle. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" reported that some archaeologists had professed to discover a figure of the crown of thorns in the circle which sometimes surrounds the chi-rho emblem on early Christian sarcophagi, but the compilers considered that it seemed to be quite as probable that this was only meant for a laurel wreath.


title: Crown of thorns

text: The image of the crown of thorns is often used symbolically to contrast with earthly monarchical crowns. In the symbolism of King Charles the Martyr, the executed English King Charles I is depicted putting aside his earthly crown to take up the crown of thorns, as in William Marshall's print Eikon Basilike. This contrast appears elsewhere in art, for example in Frank Dicksee's painting "The Two Crowns".


title: Crown of thorns

text: A critique of the adoration of the crown of thorns was set forth in 1543 by John Calvin in the work "Treatise on Relics". He described numerous parts of the crown of thorns known to him, located in different cities. Based on a large number of parts of the crown of thorns, Calvin wrote:


title: Crown of thorns

text: In regard to the Crown of thorns, it would seem that its twigs had been planted that they might grow again. Otherwise I know not how it could have attained to such a size. First, a third part of it is at Paris, in the Holy Chapel, and then at Rome there are three thorns in Santa Croce, and some portion also in St. Eustathius. At Sienna, I know not how many thorns, at Vineennes one, at Bourges five, at Besan~on, in the church of St. John, three, and as many at Koningsberg. At the church of St. Salvator, in Spain, are several, but how many I know not; at Compostella, in the church of St. Jago, two; in Vivarais, three; also at Toulouse, Mascon, Charrox in Poicton, St. Clair, Sanflor, San Maximinin Provence, in the monastery of Selles, and also in the church of St. Martin at Noyon, each place having a single thorn. But if diligent search were made, the number might be increased fourfold. It is most evident that there must here be falsehood and imposition. How will the truth be ascertained? It ought, moreover, to be observed, that in the ancient Church it was never known what had become of that crown. Hence it is easy to conclude, that the first twig of that now shown grew many years after our Saviour's death.


title: Running of the bulls

text: A running of the bulls (, from the verb "encerrar", 'to corral, to enclose'; , literally 'haste, momentum'; , 'run-bulls') is an event that involves running in front of a small group of bulls, typically six but sometimes ten or more, that have been let loose on sectioned-off streets in a town, usually as part of a summertime festival. Particular breeds of cattle may be favored, such as the in Spain, also often used in post-run bullfighting, and Camargue cattle in Occitan France, which are not fought. Bulls (non-castrated male cattle) are typically used in such events.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The most famous bull-run is the held in Pamplona during the nine-day festival of Sanfermines in honor of Saint Fermin. It has become a major global tourism event, today very different from the traditional, local festival. More traditional summer bull-runs are held in other places such as towns and villages across Spain and Portugal, in some cities in Mexico, and in the Occitan (Camargue) region of southern France. Bull-running was formerly also practiced in rural England, most famously at Stamford until 1837.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The event has its origins in the old practice of transporting bulls from the fields outside the city, where they were bred, to the bullring, where they would be killed in the evening. During this "run", local youths would jump among them in a display of bravado. In Pamplona and other places, the six bulls that run are also in that afternoon's bullfight.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Spanish tradition holds that bull-running began in northeastern Spain in the early 14th century. Cattle herders who wanted to transport their animals from barges or from the countryside into city centers for sale or bullfights needed an easy way to move their precious animals. While transporting cattle in order to sell them at the market, men would try to speed the process by hurrying their cattle using tactics of fear and excitement. After years of this practice, the transportation and hurrying began to turn into a competition, as young adults would attempt to race in front of the bulls and make it safely to their pens without being overtaken. When the popularity of this practice increased and was noticed more and more by the expanding population of Spanish cities, a tradition was created and stands to this day.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The Running was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, but resumed 7–14 July 2022.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The Pamplona encierro is the most popular in Spain and has been broadcast live by RTVE, the public Spanish national television channel, for over 30 years. It is the highest-profile event of the San Fermín festival, which is held every year from 6–14 July. The first bull running is on 7 July, followed by one on each of the following mornings of the festival, beginning every day at 8 am. The rules require participants to be at least 18 years old, run in the same direction as the bulls, not incite the bulls, and not be under the influence of alcohol.


title: Running of the bulls

text: In Pamplona, a set of wooden fences is erected to direct the bulls along the route and to block off side streets. A double wooden fence is used in those areas where there is enough space, while in other parts the buildings of the street act as barriers. The gaps in the barricades are wide enough for a human to slip through but narrow enough to block a bull. The fence is composed of approximately three thousand separate pieces of wood. Some parts of the fence remain in place for the duration of the fiesta, while others are placed and removed each morning. Spectators can only stand behind the second fence, whereas the space between the two fences is reserved for security and medical personnel and also for participants who need cover during the event.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The encierro begins with runners singing a benediction. It is sung three times, each time being sung both in Spanish and Basque. The benediction is a prayer given at a statue of Saint Fermin, patron of the festival and the city, to ask the saint's protection and can be translated into English as "We ask Saint Fermin, as our Patron, to guide us through the encierro and give us his blessing". The singers finish by shouting " and ('Long live Saint Fermin', in Spanish and Basque, respectively). Most runners dress in the traditional clothing of the festival which consists of a white shirt and trousers with a red waistband () and neckerchief (). Also some of them hold the day's newspaper rolled to draw the bulls' attention from them if necessary.


title: Running of the bulls

text: A first rocket is set off at 8 a.m. to alert the runners that the corral gate is open. A second rocket signals that all six bulls have been released. The third and fourth rockets are signals that all of the herd has entered the bullring and its corral respectively, marking the end of the event. The average duration between the first rocket and the end of the encierro is two minutes, 30 seconds.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The encierro is usually composed of the six bulls to be fought in the afternoon, six steers that run in herd with the bulls, and three more steers that follow the herd to encourage any reluctant bulls to continue along the route. The function of the steers, who run the route daily, is to guide the bulls to the bullring. The average speed of the herd is .


title: Running of the bulls

text: The length of the run is . It goes through four streets of the old part of the city (Santo Domingo, Ayuntamiento, Mercaderes and Estafeta) via the Town Hall Square and the short section "Telefónica" (named for the location of the old telephone office at end of Calle Estafeta) just before entering into the bullring through its callejón (tunnel). The fastest part of the route is up Santo Domingo and across the Town Hall Square, but the bulls often became separated at the entrance to Estafeta Street as they slow down. One or more would slip going into the turn at Estafeta ("la curva"), resulting in the installation of anti-slip surfacing, and now most of the bulls negotiate the turn onto Estafeta and are often ahead of the steers. This has resulted in a quicker run. Runners are not permitted in the first 50 meters of the encierro, which is an uphill grade where the bulls are much faster.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Every year, between 50 and 100 people are injured during the run. Not all of the injuries require taking the patients to hospital: in 2013, 50 people were taken by ambulance to Pamplona's hospital, with this number nearly doubling that of 2012.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Goring is much less common but potentially life threatening. In 2013, for example, six participants were gored along the festival, in 2012, only four runners were injured by the horns of the bulls with exactly the same number of gored people in 2011, nine in 2010 and 10 in 2009; with one of these last killed. As most of the runners are male, only 5 women have been gored since 1974. Before that date, running was prohibited for women.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Another major risk is runners falling and piling up (a "montón") at the entrance of the bullring, which acts as a funnel as it is much narrower than the previous street, resulting in a crowd crush. In such cases, injuries come both from asphyxia and contusions to those in the pile and from goring if the bulls crush into the pile. This kind of blocking of the entrance has occurred at least ten times in the history of the run, the last occurring in 2013 and the first dating back to 1878. A runner died of suffocation in one such pile up in 1977.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Overall, since record-keeping began in 1910, 15 people have been killed in the bull running of Pamplona, most of them due to being gored. To minimize the impact of injuries every day 200 people collaborate in the medical attention. They are deployed in 16 sanitary posts (every 50 metres on average), each one with at least a physician and a nurse among their personnel. Most of these 200 people are volunteers, mainly from the Red Cross. In addition to the medical posts, there are around 20 ambulances. This organization makes it possible to have a gored person stabilized and taken to a hospital in less than 10 minutes.


title: Running of the bulls

text: In 2021 a man bled to death after he was repeatedly gored at a bull-running festival in the city of Onda in eastern Spain.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Though there is no formal dress code, the very common and traditional attire is white trousers, a white shirt with a red cummerbund around the waist, and a red neckerchief around the neck. Some have large logos on their shirts; in the Internet age this is thought to be a way to highlight someone in a photo. This dress is to honor San Fermin, the center of the celebration, because of his martyr's death; the white outfits represent the purity and holiness of a saint, and the red kerchiefs ("pañuelos"), represent his death by decapitation. A common alternate color to red is blue.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The encierro of Pamplona has been depicted many times in literature, television or advertising, but became known worldwide partly because of the descriptions of Ernest Hemingway in books "The Sun Also Rises" and "Death in the Afternoon".


title: Running of the bulls

text: The run is depicted in the 1991 Billy Crystal film "City Slickers", where the character "Mitch" (Crystal) is gored (non-fatally) from behind by a bull during a vacation with the other main characters.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The run appears in the 2011 Bollywood movie "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara", directed by Zoya Akhtar, as the final dare in the bucket list of the three bachelors who have to overcome their ultimate fear; death. At first, the trio run part of the route. They stop at the square, but then recover their nerve, and continue to the end. The completion of the run depicts their freedom as they learn that surviving a mortal danger can bring joy.


title: Running of the bulls

text: "Running with Bulls," a 2012 documentary of the festival filmed by Construct Creatives and presented by Jason Farrel, depicts the pros and cons of the controversial tradition.


title: Running of the bulls

text: From 2014 until 2016, the Esquire Network broadcast the running of the bulls live in the United States, with both live commentary and then a recorded 'round up' later in the day by NBCSN commentators the Men in Blazers, including interviews with noted participants such as Madrid-born runner David Ubeda, former US Army soldier turned filmmaker Dennis Clancey, Joseph Distler, famous New York bull runner, and former British bullfighter and author Alexander Fiske-Harrison.


title: Running of the bulls

text: In 2014, a guidebook authored by Alexander Fiske-Harrison, Joe Distler, Ernest Hemingway's grandson John, Orson Welles' daughter Beatrice, and with a foreword by the Mayor of Pamplona, caused headlines around the world when one of the contributors, Bill Hillmann, was gored by a bull soon after its publication. It was republished in 2017 under the title "The Bulls Of Pamplona" with a replacement chapter by Dennis Clancey.


title: Running of the bulls

text: The award-winning 2015 feature documentary "Chasing Red" directed by Dennis Clancey, follows four runners during the 2012 fiesta in Pamplona, including Bill Hillmann and David Ubeda.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Although the most famous running of the bulls is that of San Fermín, they are held in towns and villages across Spain, Portugal, and in some cities in southern France during the summer. Examples are the bull run of San Sebastián de los Reyes, near Madrid, at the end of August which is the most popular of Spain after Pamplona, the bull run of Cuéllar, considered as the oldest of Spain since there are documents of its existence dating back to 1215, the Highland Capeias of the Raia in Sabugal, Portugal, with horses leading the herd crossing old border passes out of Spain and using the medieval 'Forcåo', or the bull run of Navalcarnero held at night.


title: Running of the bulls

text: "Bous al carrer", "correbou" or "correbous" (meaning in Catalan, 'bulls in the street', 'street-bulls' or 'bull-running') is a typical festivity in many villages in the Valencian region, Terres de l'Ebre, Catalonia, and Fornalutx, Mallorca. Another similar tradition is "soltes de vaques", where cows are used instead of bulls. Even though they can take place all along the year, they are most usual during local festivals (normally in August). Compared to encierros, animals are not directed to any bullring.


title: Running of the bulls

text: These festivities are normally organized by the youngsters of the village, as a way for showing their courage and ability with the bull. Some sources consider this tradition a masculine initiation rite to adulthood.


title: Running of the bulls

text: Numerous bull-running events happen in France in the region around Sommières, in accordance with the Camargues tradition, in which no bulls are intentionally injured or killed. For instance, in Calvisson, the annual event takes place around 20 July over a period of five days. There are four events: the , in which at least ten bulls are run together through the street guided by a group of twelve mounted on white Camargue horses; the , in which one bull is released outside the foyer and finds his own way back to the pen; the , in which one bull is run, accompanied through the streets; and the , which is the same thing but after dark. Boys and men run with the bulls and try and separate them from the horses, stop them, and physically turn them away from the horses.