The Collaborative International Dictionary
Catastrophist \Ca*tas"tro*phist\, n. (Geol.) One who holds the theory or catastrophism.
Wiktionary
a. Of, having, or being a theory that explains a situation by positing one or more catastrophic events, as opposed to gradual changes. n. A catastrophist person: a person who subscribes to a catastrophist theory.
Usage examples of "catastrophist".
Meanwhile, the catastrophists believed that the aliens represented terrible danger.
But the catastrophists had plenty of rage left over to be directed at other targets, healthily fueled by conspiracy theorists.
Catastrophists, as you might expect from the name, believed that the Earth was shaped by abrupt cataclysmic events—floods principally, which is why catastrophism and neptunism are often wrongly bundled together.
Species, and all the successively higher groups composed of species—genus, family, order, class, phylum—appear abruptly, fully differentiated and specialized, in sudden epochs of innovation just as the catastrophists had always said, without any intermediates leading up to them or linking them together.
Lord Mallory has long since modified the radical Catastrophist doctrines of his youth, gracefully abandoning the discredited notion that the Earth is no more than three hundred thousand years old -- radioactive dating having proven otherwise.