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Creationism
Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" on the Sistine Chapel ceiling
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Biblical cosmology
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Rejection of evolution by religious groups
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Creation Magazine is a publication supporting young-earth creationist beliefs. This issue examines whether dinosaurs perished in Noah's flood.

Creation science (also known as scientific creationism or CS) is a subset of the creationist movement. Its advocates claim to be constructing theories that meet scientific standards, under the assumption, by way of religious faith, that the Bible is an accurate historical depiction of the origins of the universe, Earth, and/or life. The vast majority of scientists argue that such efforts are pseudoscientific. The United States' National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creation science is in fact not science and should not be presented as such."

Organized movement

Creation science as an organized movement is primarily centered within the United States, although creation science organizations are known in other countries. Proponents are found primarily among various denominations of Christianity described as evangelical, conservative, or fundamentalist. While creationist movements also exist in the Baha'i faith, Islam, and Judaism, these movements do not use the phrase creation science to describe their beliefs.

Controversy

Creation science has its roots in the ongoing effort by young earth creationists to critique modern science's description of natural history (particularly evolution, but also geology and cosmology) while attempting to offer an alternative explanation of observable phenomena—an explanation they also describe as "science"—compatible with the Biblical account.

The proponents of Creation Science generally do not assert that the Biblical account is scientifically verifiable or falsifiable. Instead, they argue that mainstream scientific theories of the origins of the universe, the earth, and life are rooted in an assumption of methodological naturalism that is equally unfalsifiable, and that, therefore, it is a matter of faith to decide whether one proceeds under the assumption that the Biblical account describes actual historical events, or under the assumption of a naturalistic universe. Its adherents do, however, often argue that many observable phenomena fit more easily into the Biblical account than with the naturalistic worldview. The vast majority of mainstream scientists argue that this premise runs counter to the core principles of coherent scientific methodology.

Religious criticisms of creation science

Fideists criticize creation science on the grounds either that religious faith, alone, should be a sufficient basis for belief, or that efforts to prove the Genesis account of creation on scientific grounds are inherently futile, arguing that faith is a necessary component of divine salvation.

Many Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran faiths, have either rejected creation science outright or are ambivalent to it, since much of Christian theology, including Liberal Christianity, considers the Genesis narrative primarily a poetic and allegorical work and not a literal history. Supporters of Young Earth creationism argue that Genesis has the style of a historical narrative and none of the earmarks of Hebrew poetry.

Scientific criticisms of creation science

The United States' National Academy of Sciences has said that "creation science is in fact not science and should not be presented as such." According to the NAS, "the claims of creation science lack empirical support and cannot be meaningfully tested."

Creationists often claim that creationism, and more specifically creation science, is not only scientific, but that it is more scientific than evolution. This presents a demarcation problem, which in the philosophy of science, is about how and where to draw the lines around science. For a theory to qualify as scientific it must be:

  • consistent (internally and externally)
  • parsimonious (sparing in proposed entities or explanations)
  • useful (describes and explains observed phenomena)
  • empirically testable and falsifiable
  • based upon controlled, repeatable experiments
  • correctable and dynamic (changes are made as new data is discovered)
  • progressive (achieves all that previous theories have and more)
  • tentative (admits that it might not be correct rather than asserting certainty)

For any theory, hypothesis or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must meet at least most, but ideally all, of the above criteria. The fewer which are matched, the less scientific it is; and if it meets only a couple or none at all, then it cannot be treated as scientific in any useful sense of the word, and may instead be characterized as a pseudoscience. On these points, the National Academy of Sciences said:

Scientists have considered the hypotheses proposed by creation science and have rejected them because of a lack of evidence. Furthermore, the claims of creation science do not refer to natural causes and cannot be subject to meaningful tests, so they do not qualify as scientific hypotheses. In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creationism is religion, not science, and cannot be advocated in public school classrooms. And most major religious groups have concluded that the concept of evolution is not at odds with their descriptions of creation and human origins.

A summary of the objections to creation science by mainstream scientists:

  • Creationism is not falsifiable. Theism is not falsifiable, since the existence of God is typically asserted without sufficient conditions to allow a falsifying observation. God being a transcendental being, beyond the realm of the observable, claims about his existence can neither be supported nor undermined by observation, hence making creationism, the argument from design and other arguments for the existence of God a posteriori arguments. (See also the section on falsifiability, below)
  • Creationism violates the principle of parsimony. Creationism fails to pass Occam's razor. Adding supernatural entities to the equation is not strictly necessary to explain events.
  • Creationism is not empirically testable. That creationism is not empirically testable stems from the fact that creationism violates a basic premise of science, naturalism.
  • Creationism is not based upon controlled, repeatable experiments. That Creationism is not based upon controlled, repeatable experiments stems not from the theory itself, but from the phenomenon that it tries to explain.
  • Creationism is not correctable, dynamic, tentative or progressive. Creationism professes to adhere to the absolute Truth, the word of God, not a provisional assessment of data which can change when new information is discovered. Once it is claimed that the Truth has been established, there is simply no possibility of future correction. The idea of the progressive growth of scientific ideas is required to explain previous data and any previously unexplainable data as well as any future data. It is often given as a justification for the naturalistic basis of science. In any practical sense of the concept, creationism is not progressive: it does not explain or expand upon what went before it and is not consistent with established ancillary theories.

Its lack of adherence to the standards of the scientific method mean that Creationism, and specifically Creation Science, cannot be said to be scientific, at least not in the way that science is conventionally understood and utilized. As a result, scientists characterize Creationism as a pseudoscience.

Scientists note that Creation Science differs from mainstream science in that it begins with an assumption, then attempts to find evidence to support that assumption. Conversely, science sets out to learn about the world through the collection of empirical evidence and the use of the scientific method.

Historically, the debate of whether Creationism is compatible with science can be traced back to 1874, the year influential science historian John William Draper published his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. In it, he portrayed the entire history of scientific development as a war against religion. This presentation of history was propagated further by such prestigious followers as Andrew Dickson White in his essay A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. However, their conclusions have been disputed.

Some opponents consider Creation Science to be an ideologically and politically motivated propaganda tool, akin to a cult, the purpose of which is to promote the creationist agenda in society. They allege that the term "Creation Science" was chosen to purposely blur the distinction between science and religion, thereby undeservedly legitimizing creationism by association to science.

Subjects within creation science

Subjects within creation science can be into split into three broad categories, each covering a different area of origins research; creationist cosmologies, flood geology, and creation biology.

Creation biology

Main article: Creation biology

Creation biology centers around an idea derived from Genesis that states that life was created by God in a finite number of created kinds rather than through biological evolution. Creationists who involve themselves in this endeavor believe that observable speciation took place through inbreeding and harmful mutations during an alleged population bottleneck after the great flood of Noah's ark, which they claim was an actual historical event that happened exactly as described in the Bible.

While there is no physical evidence for a global flood event that is consistent with the methods and standards of scientific evidence, creation biology is meant to be a persuasive argument against biological evolution (see creation-evolution controversy). Popular arguments against evolution have changed over the years since the publishing of Henry M. Morris's first book on the subject, Scientific Creationism, but themes often arise: missing links as an indication that evolution is incomplete, arguments based on entropy, complexity, and information theory, arguments claiming that natural selection is an impossible mechanism, and general criticism of the conclusions drawn from historical sciences as lacking experimental basis. The origin of the human species is particularly hotly contested; the fossil remains of hominid ancestors are not considered by advocates of creation biology to be evidence for a speciation event involving Homo sapiens.

Flood geology

Main article: Flood geology

Flood geology is an idea based on the belief that many of Earth's geological formations were created by the global flood described in the story of Noah's ark. Fossils and fossil fuels are believed by its followers to have formed from animal and plant matter which was buried rapidly during this flood, while submarine canyon extensions are explained as having formed during a rapid runoff from the continents after the seafloors dropped. Sedimentary strata are described as sediments predominantly laid down after Noah's flood.

Geologists active in the field admit that no such flood is seen in the preserved rock layers and moreover that the flood itself represents a physical impossibility. Nevertheless, there continue to be many creationists who argue that the flood can explain the fossil record and the evidence from geology and paleontology that are often used to dispute creationists' claims. In addition to the above ideas that are in opposition to the principles of geology, advocates of flood geology reject uniformitarianism and the findings of radiometric dating.

Creationist cosmologies

Main article: Creationist cosmologies

Several attempts have been made by creationists to construct a cosmology consistent with a young universe rather than the standard cosmological age of the universe, based on the belief that Genesis describes the creation of the universe as well as the Earth. The primary challenge for young universe cosmologies is that the accepted distances in the universe require millions or billions of years for light to travel to Earth.

Cosmology is not as widely discussed as creation biology or flood geology, for several reasons. First, many creationists, particularly old earth creationists and intelligent design creationists do not dispute that the universe may be billions of years old. Also, some creationists who believe that the Earth was created in the timeframe described in a literal interpretation of Genesis believe that Genesis describes only the creation of the Earth, rather than the creation of the entire universe, allowing for both a young Earth and an old universe. Finally, the technical nature of the discipline of physical cosmology and its ties to mathematical physics prevent those without significant technical knowledge from understanding the full details of how the observations and theories behind the current models work, let alone a critique of such work.


History

Within the history of creationism, creationism was originally based purely on theology. The vast majority of Church Fathers and Reformers accepted Genesis straightforwardly, and even the few who did not, such as Origen and Augustine, defended an earth that was on the order of thousands of years old.

When geologists revised the age of the Earth to millions of years, some writers looked to studying geology within the Biblical timeframe detailed in the Ussher-Lightfoot calendar. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the leaders were the scriptural geologists in Britain. About a century later, the Canadian George McCready Price wrote extensively on the subject. However, the concept only revived during the 1960s following the publication of The Genesis Flood by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb.

Subsequently, creation science has expanded into biology and cosmology. However, efforts to have it legislated to be taught in schools in the United States were eventually halted by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First amendment in Edwards v. Aguillard 1987.

See also

References

Template:Mnb American Heritage Dictionary definition of creation science
Template:Mnb "The philosopher of science as expert witness", p. 43, in Cushing, J., Delaney, C.F. & Gutting, G., Science and reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
Template:Mnb Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition, 1999, National Academy of Sciences.
Template:Mnb Project Steve: FAQs National Center for Science Education, 2003-2005

Further reading

A history of scientific creationism and its course in time can be found in Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Creation science

  • Batten, Don, Editor The Answers Book ISBN 0-949906-23-9 (Brisbane, Australia: Answers in Genesis, 1999)
  • Morris, Henry M., ed., Scientific Creationism ISBN 0-89052-003-2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1985)
  • Morris, Henry M. and Gary E. Parker, What is Creation Science? ISBN 0-89051-081-4 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1987)
  • Mortenson, Terry, The Great Turning Point: The Church's Catastrophic Mistake on Geology — Before Darwin ISBN 0-89051-408-9 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004)
  • Rose, Seraphim, Genesis, Creation and Early Man ISBN: 1887904026 (Saint Herman, 2000)
  • Roth, Ariel A., Origins—Linking Science and Scripture ISBN 0-8280-1328-4 Hagarstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1998)
  • Sarfati, Jonathan, Refuting Evolution ISBN 0-890512-58-2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1999) forward and introduction
  • Sarfati, Jonathan, Refuting Evolution 2 ISBN 0-890513-87-2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2002) table of contents with links to chapters
  • Sarfati, Jonathan, Refuting Compromise ISBN 0-890514-11-9 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004) introductory chapter and some reviews
  • Wilder-Smith, A. E., Man's Origin, Man's Destiny ISBN 0-87123-356-8 (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Co., 1968)
  • Woodmorappe, John, Studies in Flood Geology ISBN 0-932766-54-4 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1993)
  • Woodmorappe, John, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study ISBN 0-932766-41-2 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1996)
  • Woodmorappe, John, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods ISBN 0-932766-57-9 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1999)
  • Wilder-Smith, A. E., Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory ISBN 9-99213-967-6 (Costa Mesa, CA: TWFT Publishers, 1987)
  • Gish, Duane T., Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics ISBN 0-932766-28-5 (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1993)
  • Whitcomb, John C. and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood ISBN 0-87552-338-2 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964)

Criticism

  • Bates, V. L., 1976, Christian Fundamentalism and the Theory of Evolution in Public School Education: A Study of the Creation Science Movement : University of California, Davis.
  • Frye, R.M., 1983, Is God a creationist?: the religious case against creation-science, ISBN 0684179938, (New York: Scribner's, c1983)
  • Kitcher, P., 1983, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism ISBN 026261037X (Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 1983)
  • Lewin, R., 1982, Where is the Science in Creation science? Science 215, pp. 142–146.
  • Pennock, R., 2000, Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, ISBN 0262661659 (The MIT Press; Reprint edition, February 28, 2000)
  • Vawter, B., 1983, Creationism: Creative Misuse of the Bible, in Frye, R. M., ed., Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case Against Creation-Science (New York, Scribner's Sons), p. 71–82.
  • Numbers, R.L., 1992, The Creationists, ISBN 0679401040, (New York: A. A. Knopf: Distributed by Random House)
  • McKown, D.B., 1993, The mythmaker's magic : behind the illusion of "creation science", ISBN 0879757701, (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993)
  • Tiffin, L., 1994, Creationism's Upside-Down Pyramid: How Science Refutes Fundamentalism, ISBN 0879758988, (Prometheus Books, August 1, 1994)
  • Zimmerman, M. , 1997, Science, Nonscience, and Nonsense, ISBN 0801857740, (The Johns Hopkins University Press; Reprint edition, December 1, 1997)
  • Synoptic Position Statement of the Georgia Academy of Science with Respect to the Forced Teaching of Creation-­Science in Public School Science Education, 2000, ISBN B0008JBPNY. (Georgia Academy of Science; March 22, 2000)

External links

Neutral

  • Edwards v. Aguillard 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling preventing the teaching of creation science in public school science classrooms

Creation science

Criticism

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