Creation Science AmericanReformation Project

Science and Creation Science

By Glenn R. Jackson

No one can doubt that science, with all it's many areas and disciplines, has a tremendous impact on our daily lives. There seems to have been over the last thirty years an actual explosion in the amount of scientific research, and in return, a corresponding explosion in the applied sciences. Hardly a day goes by that the newspapers or magazines are not full of accounts of new research, new discoveries, and new applications from some area of science. We are daily exposed to science and, although we may be somewhat de-synthesized, we begin to think that there is nothing science can not do or explain.

There are certain times when science will jar us from a lulled sleep, shame us awake, and grab our fullest attention. Surprisingly, it's not the discovery of new weapons or the idea of men living in space that really grabs our attention. It's more a question of things that really don't seem to have any direct influence on our daily lives that hold the greatest interest for us. The question of origins of the world and man, today the center of the controversy over the teaching of evolution or creation science, is an example of where our greatest interest and emotional involvement seems to lie. While at first glance this may appear as just another controversy over competing scientific theories there seems to be something more important underlying the whole question on origins.

It seems that in this controversy the real battle is being waged over the idea of value, the value of human existence. The question that is of real concern is whether man was created purposefully by a Creator or whether man was created accidentally by mechanistic forces that were beyond conscious control. It will be the intention of this paper to show that the evolution/creation science controversy is not a true scientific dispute, but is a question on the value of human existence. 'And, with this understanding, it will also be the intention of this paper to show that Christians backing creation science in public schools are contending with the wrong aspect of the evolution/ creation science issue by engaging science instead of the philosophic question of values in public schools.

Charles Darwin’s: "The Origin of Species" may have been the first departure for science from a Christian's biblical understanding of creation. This and his other subsequent works caused quite a stir; it was a controversial new idea to say that man and animals were evolved one, from the other. And while this idea was startling to the man in the streets, to those of the Christian faith it was an outrageous idea.

Before this, as a general rule. science and the Christian faith had been on compatible terms. Science was seen as just an outgrowth of Man's reason and intellect which were God given gifts to Man and therefore, to be used to understand the world and to better man's lot. Of course this attitude toward science had not always been present. Early in the infancy of what we now call science the
Christian Church had cracked down hard on those whose explorations and discoveries tended to violate established Church doctrine (Galileo and Copernicus being examples). But these were violations of doctrines that had been established by man, not by God. That is to say that the Church leadership had interpreted and sometimes stretched the biblical word of God and had made certain doctrinal
assertions which these early explorations in science were disproving (for example an earth centered universe). These challenges to the Church by science, because they challenged man's word and not God's, were eventually accepted by the Church, and led to the scientific method becoming allied with the Christian faith. Never before, however, had science directly challenged the biblical word of God as Darwinism had; "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." (Genesis 1:1) "Then God said 'Let Us make man in Our image according to Our likeness...'"(Genesis 1:26).

God had created the earth and had created man in His own likeness, the conflict with Darwinism was quite clear. However, this time the scientific tradition was much too well established, and although the Church and those of the Christian faith found it outrageous, Darwinism or evolution science began to flourish within scientific circles. Now while evolution flourished within the scientific community, science also began to flourish within Christian civilization. The scientific tradition became an increasingly established and essential part of the common man's life. It was this essential nature of science that made it necessary for the common man to nave a general scientific background himself, this being accomplished through the public education system.

This important step into education brought with it a renewed conflict between evolution and creation science, for evolution was no longer contained within the scientific community, but was now being taught as truth in public schools. The first round of this conflict could be said to have been fought with the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. Although this was a defeat for evolution eventually the scientific community proved to be, because of its ability to explain and provide results to most questions and problems, too strong and able for it's opponents to hold back. And so evolution began to be taught as a viable theory of the origins of man. Thus it became obvious to many that the only way for Christians to fight this fire was with fire, and creation science was born.

Science, by it's very nature, does not lead to complete certainty, but it can when enough relevant evidence is accumulated that lends support to an hypotheses or theory, lead to the conclusion that in all probability the hypothesis or theory is true. Evolution, as a theory, has accumulated enough carbon dating evidence, for example, to lend support to the belief that the earth is very old. With age being one of the requirements of evolution, this fact of great age lends a certain support to the theory of evolution. Evolution also finds support in fossil records that indicate a diversity of creatures showing a progressive movement toward a more advanced form, or that indicate an evolving nature. All of this lends a probabilistic support to the theory of evolution, but not certainty.

This probabilistic support left a chink in the evidential armor of evolution that creation science was to attempt to exploit. The carbon dating evidence was shown to be faulty and open to new interpretations that lead to the establishing of a much younger age for the earth. The fossil evidence was also challenged by a counter claim that some catastrophic event in the earth's recent past was responsible for the fossil records and not the great age of the earth. With these new interpretations of evolution's own evidential support Creationist built a biblically based scientific theory of the origins of man.

Creation science begins with the supposition that the Bible-contains absolute truth, and while this may be true, the scientific method is not intended to start with truth, it is a method that leads toward truth. There is more to doing science than forming a hypothesis, showing evidential support, and then espousing a theory. Science is built on a unified 'body of knowledge, Where one theory lends support to another and so on down the line. For a new theory to find support it must not only build a case for itself, but it also must be seen to lend support to other well established theories. If it does not, then either the other theories are incorrect in some way or it is incorrect, but if the other theories are well supported that leads to only one conclusion. In the case of creation science it appears that, as structured, it is too far in disagreement with other scientific theories.

Besides the above, Creation science seems to further violate scientific methodology by arguing not from an hypothesis that is being tested for truth, but from a held truth for which evidence is being construed in a certain way to prove that it is true. This is a circular argument and somewhat of a straw man. For if something is held to be true then it is far too easy to fit the evidence in anyway to "prove" that hypothesis as true. To be truly science it is just as important for a hypothesis to be proven false as it is for it to be proven true. This avenue of science is being closed off by some creationist who maintain that all evidence used by evolution science was planted by God as a means of confusing those who would pry into creation. This presents an argument for which there is no possible rebuttal, and that eliminates science. For as it was said before, it is just as important to prove something false, and eliminate it, as it is to prove something true and keep it.

It seems clear from this that creation science is a single-issue science and is not a direct outgrowth of science as a system. Creationism is being put forward in an attempt to rebut one aspect of science, given the nature of science this may be an unnecessary attempt. For while science is uncertain and somewhat slow it's method does lead to a closer and closer approximation of the truth. As an example, creationists could take heart from the newly published theory of "punctuated evolution" which more nearly fits the biblical account of a direct intervention by God to create the world and man. So while it is obvious that Christians have a disagreement with the theory of evolution, creationism neither appears to be a viable scientific argument against evolution nor does it appear to be necessary. For if creation is true as revealed by God then science will, by its methodology of proof and disproof, eventually confirm that truth.

If science as a method is not the real point of contention between evolution and creation science then it becomes necessary to find the real point of difference. This point of difference appears to be in the area of value. For if evolution is true as presently held, then creation is the result of certain mechanistic processes, and because these forces are impersonal, that is without conscious direction, they are also purposeless from the human standpoint. Only with conscious direction does purpose come into play, anything else is a matter of chance or accident. Being purposeless they are also valueless. For man must find a value to his creation that comes from outside of himself, and it is this that is impossible with a mechanistic creation that would occur whether anyone wanted it or not, whether by chance or not.

Man is considered on the highest level of creation and it is from this position that Man is able to give value to the rest of creation. It is only through Man that value can be introduced, more specifically only when there is someone to do the valuing is there any value. If this is true then the question arises; can Man give value to his own creation?

That something is valued can be understood by the worth attached to it, by the amount of merit one places in having the valued thing. Can it be said that anything lower in the order of creation values anything? This does not appear so because any action that could possibly be construed as valuing can more easily be explained on the level of natural instinct, that is all but one. That one thing is the value that could be said to exist between certain animals and Man, a value that is not just from Man to animal, but from animal to Man. This animal to man valuing can be said to exist because these special relationships violate normal instincts. For example, a dog is said to value its master. Of course this could be just an extension of an instinctive need for food and shelter, but in all honesty it must be conceded that there is a bond that exceeds these instinctive needs. A dog values its master because its master values it, and this value is present only because the master valued first. This then brings us once again to that real point of contention between evolution and creation science. If evolution is true; that is, that creation is the result of mechanistic forces, and if man was not present to give value to those forces, with man being the finite creature that he is, then how did value get into the system?

Can Man give value to Man? Well, as I have argued above, value is passed down from above and with Man being the highest of creation then value derives from him. Yet, Man is finite and was created, and if he is created then there is something higher than Man, that being the forces that created him. However, these forces operate on chance. So where is the value? It is at this point that a creation ordered by an infinite, personal and valuing being provides the answers. It's this aspect of value and not science that the creationist’s argument should use against evolution.

If creation science is not the answer to the problem of evolution then what is? To be consistent Christians need to remember where the basis for their beliefs comes from and the nature of those beliefs. That means remembering that their beliefs come from an infinite, personal God in the form of absolute truths found in the Bible. The question then is do Christians want to take absolute truths and subject them to the scientific method? To be consistent the answer must be no. To be science means that something is open to being proven false, and this just can not be done with absolute truths. It is therefore more consistent and advantageous for Christians to find another way to argue against evolution. This, as argued before, is in the area of value.

To accomplish an argument from value against evolution it will be necessary to withdraw the attempts to establish creation science in public schools. For creation science to remain is inconsistent with the magnitude of creation. Being presented as a science, creation will be seen as uncertain and open to falsification. To present it along with evolution is to put the two theories on par with each other, they will then be seen as equally true. To make use of the full strength of the Christian idea of creation will mean asserting that the biblical account is absolutely true in a general way. That is say that God did create the earth and all its creatures, as to exactly how he did it, there are so specifics. So it becomes a matter of allowing science the latitude to make mistakes on the specifics as it searches for the answer to how without being concerned if the present theory is unacceptable to Christians. Theories change rapidly in science and what is here today will be replaced tomorrow by a closer approximation to the truth, and if Christians hold that truth then they must only sit and wait. However matters are different when science begins to make judgements in areas like value, for judgments on value are not within it's power or methodology to make.

Christians must come to understand that it is not the theories being taught that should be of concern but it is the atmosphere in which they are taught that is the problem. It's not science that should change, just because it has become a valueless vacuum.

The Christian faith holds that a personal, loving God was responsible for all creation. A God that on each day of creation pronounced His judgement of value by declaring that day good, and by pronouncing a special value for Man by declaring his day of creation very good. It's this personal relationship of a loving Creator that Christians must focus on. How God created? How long it took? When it took place? All of these are unimportant questions because their answers are not as important as the answer to why God created. And that important answer, as found in the Bible, is because He wanted to create something good and valuable and worthy. As this reason for creation is true, if mankind is truly searching for a reason and value to his existence then a Christian response to evolution based on a special value to that creation will inevitably win out.