Unscientific Creationism
  by Rick Clark

After the Kansas State Board of Education's decision last year, it seems the creation-evolution debate has been growing increasingly shrill. On the one side, we have the creationist-Christian-fundamentalists (I fell into this category myself a few years back). Let's call them CCFs. CCFs are threatened by the prospect of a naturalistic worldview at odds with biblical dogma being taught as scientific fact in their public schools. On the other side, there are those of us who believe that well-tested scientific theories, currently accepted by the vast majority of people who think for themselves, should have primacy in public school science curricula. That's right -- the majority of scientists should have the final say on how science is taught to young people through publicly-funded education. Scientists are the subject matter experts, are they not? Should scientists determine the particulars of music and art curricula? Certainly not! No more should CCFs be permitted to ram their creationist skullduggery down young throats in publicly-funded, secular schools. It is their right to teach what they wish at home and in their tax-exempt churches, but -- and this is NOT negotiable -- not on public time or tax dime.

Let me qualify my preceding statements and those to follow by saying that I have no intention of trying to prove CCF beliefs false. Their tenets already have enough trouble standing up to rational thought and reason, but that is a topic for another article. No, my focus herein is the essential contradiction in the term scientific creationism. To make my point clear, we need to elucidate the essence of science. You see, the creation-evolution issue concerns not only people's worldviews but also the integrity of science itself.

True scientific inquiry begins when someone has enough curiosity about a phenomenon to observe and/or measure it. The scientist then makes a bold statement -- a hypothesis. In contradiction to Aristotle, Galileo Galilei hypothesized in the late 16th century that heavy objects and light objects accelerate at the same rate as they fall. This hypothesis (supposedly) led Galileo to drop objects of different weights from the Tower of Pisa, observing that they struck the ground simultaneously. Aristotelian physics, which stated that heavier objects fall faster, had been wrong for two millenia!

After a hypothesis has been tested via experimentation, the experimental results lead one to a conclusion -- either you're off track, or you have the makings of a theory. It was Isaac Newton in the mid-17th century who took Galileo's results (and some of his own) and formulated the theory of gravity, which stood unchallenged for roughly 250 years. Scientific theories as exhaustively tested and confirmed as gravity are usually considered to be physical "law." However, the salient point here is that scientific law can always be changed as knowledge grows, if the evidence to overthrow it is sufficiently compelling. Thus, Einstein's general theory of relativity usurped Newton's law of gravity in the early 20th century as the dominant theory of gravitation in physics.

How can CCF laws be falsified by contrary evidence? They cannot. Scientific creationist "theories" assume a priori biblical inerrancy. Physical data is interpreted through the filter of CCF dogma, and bastardized versions of modern scientific theories materialize. You see, creationism may be many things, but it is no more scientific than biblical literalism and Christian fundamentalism. To say otherwise would belittle the labors of scientists both past and present. They have given us the gift of our present science and technology, despite two millenia of Christian resistance, intransigence and irrationality. It is science, in spite of its failings, that has put humanity firmly in control of our own destiny.

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