‘It’s
not science’
by Don Batten
28 February 2002
Anti-creationists, such as atheists by definition, commonly object that
creation is religion and evolution is science. To defend this claim they will cite
a list of criteria that define a ‘good scientific theory’. A common
criterion is that the bulk of modern day practising scientists must accept it as
valid science. Another criterion defining science is the ability of a theory to
make predictions that can be tested. Evolutionists commonly claim that evolution
makes many predictions that have been found to be correct. They will cite something
like antibiotic resistance in bacteria as some sort of ‘prediction’
of evolution, whereas they question the value of the creationist model in making
predictions. Since, they say, creation fails their definition of ‘science’,
it is therefore ‘religion’, and (by implication) it can simply be ignored.
Response
Many attempts to define ‘science’ are circular. The point that a theory
must be acceptable to contemporary scientists to be acceptable, basically defines
science as ‘what scientists do’! In fact, under this definition, economic
theories would be acceptable scientific theories, if ‘contemporary scientists’
accepted them as such.
In many cases, these so-called definitions of science are blatantly self-serving
and contradictory. A number of evolutionary propagandists have claimed that creation
is not scientific because it is supposedly untestable. But in the same paragraph
they claim, ‘scientists have carefully examined the claims of creation science,
and found that ideas such as the young Earth and global Flood are incompatible with
the evidence.’ But obviously creation cannot have been examined (tested!)
and found to be false if it’s ‘untestable’.
The definition of ‘science’ has haunted philosophers of science in the
20th century. The earlier approach of Bacon, who is considered the founder
of the scientific method, was pretty straightforward:
observation → induction → hypothesis → test hypothesis by experiment
→ proof/disproof → knowledge.
Of course this, and the whole approach to modern science, depends on two major assumptions:
causality and induction. The philosopher Hume made it clear that these are believed
by ‘blind faith’ (Bertrand Russell’s words). Kant and Whitehead
claimed to have solved the problem, but Russell recognized that Hume was right.
Actually, these assumptions arose from faith in the Creator-God of the Bible, as
historians of science like Loren Eiseley
have recognized. Many scientists are so philosophically and theologically ignorant
that they don’t even realize that they have these (and other) metaphysical
assumptions. Being like a frog in the warming water, many do not even notice that
there are philosophical assumptions at the root of much that passes as ‘science’.
It’s part of their own worldview, so they don’t even notice. We at CMI
are ‘up front’ about our acceptance of revelation (the Bible). Unlike
many atheists, we recognize that a philosophy of life does not come from the data,
but rather the philosophy is brought to the data and used in interpreting it.
Perceptions and bias
The important question is not ‘Is it science?’ We can just define ‘science’
to exclude everything that we don’t like, as evolutionists do today. Today,
science is equated with naturalism: only materialistic notions can be entertained,
no matter what the evidence. The prominent evolutionist Professor Richard Lewontin
said:
‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of
some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant
promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment,
a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science
somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but,
on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material
causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce
material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying
to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow
a Divine Foot in the door.’1
Now that’s open-minded isn’t it? Isn’t ‘science’ about
following the evidence wherever it may lead? This is where the religion (in the
broadest sense) of the scientist puts the blinkers on. Our individual worldviews
bias our perceptions. The atheist paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, made the following
candid observation:
‘Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social
preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any
problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective “scientific method”,
with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving
mythology.’2
So the fundamentally important question is, ‘which worldview (bias) is correct?’,
because this will determine the correctness of the conclusions from the data.
Science a creationist invention
Of course the founders of modern science were not materialists (Newton, widely considered
the greatest scientist ever, is a prime example) and they did not see their science
as somehow excluding a creator, or even making the Creator redundant. This recent
notion has been smuggled into science by materialists.
Michael Ruse, the Canadian philosopher of science also made the strong point that
the issue is not whether evolution is science and creation is religion, because
such a distinction is not really valid. The issue is one of ‘coherency of
truth’. See The Religious Nature of Evolution.
In other words, there is no logically valid way that the materialist can define
evolution as ‘science’ and creation as ‘religion’, so that
he/she can ignore the issue of creation.
A valid distinction
However, we can make a valid distinction between different types of science: the
distinction between origins science and operational science. Operational science
involves discovering how things operate in today’s Creation—repeatable
and observable phenomena in the present. This is the science of Newton. However,
origins science deals with the origin of things in the past—unique, unrepeatable,
unobservable events. There is a fundamental difference between how the two work.
Operational science involves experimentation in the here and now. Origins science
deals with how something came into existence in the past and so is not open to experimental
verification / observation (unless someone invents a ‘time machine’
to travel back into the past to observe). Studying how an organism operates (DNA,
mutations, reproduction, natural selection etc.) does not tell us how it came into
existence in the first place.
Of course it suits materialists to confuse operational and origins science, although
I’m sure with most the confusion arises out of ignorance. Tertiary (college
/ university) courses in science mostly don’t teach the philosophy of science
and certainly make no distinction between experimental / operational and historical
/ origins sciences. Organometallic chemist Dr Stephen Grocott, although having been
through at least seven years of university training, later remarked [see
The Creation Couple]:
‘Though I’d been working as a scientist for 10 years, I really only
learnt what science was through [your ministry]. Some of the things people call
“science” are really outside the realms of science; they’re not
observable, testable, repeatable. The areas of conflict are beliefs about the past,
not open to experimental testing.
Both evolution and creation fall into the category of origins science. Both are
driven by philosophical considerations. The same data (observations in the present)
are available to everyone, but different interpretations (stories) are devised to
explain what happened in the past.
The inclusion of historical science, without distinction, as science, has undoubtedly
contributed to the modern confusion over defining science. This also explains the
statement by Gould (above), who, as a paleontologist, would like to see no distinction
between his own historical science and experimental science. Gould rightly sees
the paramount importance of presuppositions in his own ‘science’ and
assumes that it applies equally to all science. Not so.
Do you believe in hot water?
Creationists have absolutely no problem with operational science, because the evidence
drives operational science. It does not matter if you are a Christian, a Moslem,
a Hindu, or an Atheist, pure water still boils at 100°C at sea level. However,
the true Hindu might still think it is all an illusion, and some atheists embracing
postmodernism espouse that ‘truth’ is an illusion. However, origins
science is driven by philosophy. One’s belief system is fundamental to what
stories you accept as plausible. Now if the majority of practitioners of origins
/ historical science have the wrong belief system (materialism), then the stories
they find acceptable will also be wrong. So a majority vote of ‘contemporary
scientists’ is hardly a good way to determine the validity of the respective
stories. And origins science, or historical science, is essentially an exercise
in story telling—Lewontin alluded to this story telling in the quote above.
See also Is it science?
Define terms consistently!
It also suits materialists to shift the definition of evolution to suit the argument.
Let’s be clear that we are discussing the ‘General Theory of Evolution’
(GTE), which was defined by the evolutionist Kerkut as ‘the theory that all
the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came
from an inorganic form.’3 Many,
perhaps inadvertently, perform this switching definitions trick in alluding to mutations
in bacteria as corroborating ‘evolution’. This has little to do with
the belief that hydrogen changed into humans over billions of years. The key difference
is that the GTE requires not just change, but change that increases the information
content of the biosphere. See also this
discussion.
Predictions or ‘postdictions’?
Many evolutionists proffer mutations and antibiotic resistance in bacteria (operational
science) as being some sort of prediction of evolution (origins science). In fact,
genetics (operational science) was an embarrassment to evolution, which is probably
the major reason that Mendel’s pioneering genetics research went unrecognized
for so many years (Mendel’s discovery of discrete genes did not fit Darwin’s
idea of continuous unlimited variation). When mutations were discovered, these were
seen as a way of reconciling Darwinism with the observations of operational science—hence
the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Mayr, Haldane, Fisher, etc.
So, Darwinism never predicted anything, it was modified to accommodate
the observations. In fact, because Darwinism is so malleable as to accommodate almost
any conceivable observation, science philosopher Karl Popper proclaimed that it
was not falsifiable, and therefore not a proper scientific theory in that sense.
What about the predictions of evolution vs creation? The track record of evolution
is pretty dismal. See How evolution harms science.
On the other hand, modern science rides on the achievements of past creationists—see
How important to science is evolution? and Contributions
of creationist scientists. For a clear example of modern-day scientific
predictions based on a creationist model, see
Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation.
Popper’s notion that evolution is not a falsifiable scientific theory is underlined
by the many ‘predictions’ of evolutionary theory that have been found
to be incompatible with observations; and yet evolution reigns. For example, there
is the profound absence of the many millions of transitional fossils that should
exist if evolution were true (see Are there any Transitional
Fossils?). The very pattern in the fossil record flatly contradicts evolutionary
notions of what it should be like—see, for example,
Contrasting the Origin of Species With the Origin of Phyla. The evolutionist
Gould has written at length on this conundrum.
Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, none of the cases of antibiotic resistance,
insecticide resistance, etc. that have been studied at a biochemical level (i.e.
operational science) have involved de novo origin of new complex genetic
information (see the book Not By Chance (right). In fact, evolution never
‘predicted’ antibiotic resistance, because historically it took the
medical field by surprise—see Anthrax and antibiotics:
Is evolution relevant?
Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, breeding experiments reach limits;
change is not unlimited. See the article by the creationist geneticist,
Lane Lester. This matches exactly what we would expect from Genesis 1, where
it says that God created organisms to reproduce true to their different kinds.
Evolutionists expected that, given the right conditions, a living cell could make
itself (abiogenesis); creationists said this was impossible. Operational science
has destroyed this evolutionary notion; so much so that many evolutionists now want
to leave the origin of life out of the debate. Many propagandists claim that evolution
does not include this, although the theories of abiogenesis are usually called ‘chemical
evolution’. See Q&A Origin of Life for
papers outlining the profound problems for any conceivable evolutionary scenario.
Falsified but not abandoned
So, why do evolutionists persist with their spurious theory? For many it’s
because they have never heard anything else. For avowed materialists it’s
the ‘only game in town’—the only materialistic story available
to explain how everything came to be; the materialist’s creation myth. It’s
a bit like the proverbial ostrich putting its head in the sand, thinking that all
that exists is what it can see under the sand. The ostrich’s worldview excludes
everything that it does not find convenient. In the darkness of the sand, all unacceptable
facts cease to exist.
Light in the darkness!
Jesus Christ came as ‘the light of the world’
(John
8:12), when the Second Person of the Trinity took on human nature. He came
to shed the light of God in dark places. The greatest darkness is to live without
God; to live as if you are a cosmic accident, just ‘re-arranged pond-scum’,
as one evolutionist put it. Sadly, many are being duped into thinking that way and
we are seeing the horrendous consequences in escalating youth suicide, drug problems,
family break-up, violence, etc. How much we need the light of Jesus to shine! God
will hold each one of us accountable—all of us deserve His condemnation. But
the Bible says that He has provided a way of escape through Jesus Christ for all
that turn to God, humbly admitting our need of forgiveness. See
Here’s the Good News.
For more information about the above issues, and more, check out the
Q&A section, or use the search window to search for articles on subjects
of interest.
References
- Richard Lewontin, ‘Billions and billions of demons’,
The New York Review, January 9, 1997, p. 31. Return to Text.
- Stephen Jay Gould, 1994, Natural History103(2):14.
Return to Text.
- Kerkut, G. Implications of Evolution, Pergamon, Oxford,
UK, p. 157, 1960. Return to Text.
(Article available in Spanish)
|
