OK, I don’t want to hijack Ben’s thread (Why won’t the Creationists talk turkey?) any more than has been done already, but Freakboy has asked me a question in response to my statement about the difference between science and creationism; I said:
To which Freakboy poses the argument:
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It’s lucky you asked me that Freakboy because over the last six months or so I have been asking myself exactly the question that you raise; and as a result I have been forced to abandon my belief in creationism as the hollow sham that it really is.
Yes, I’m sure there is a certain amount of bias in any investigation, but the plain fact remains that the whole creationism package consists almost entirely of misinformed attacks on evolutionary theory - not much real science is being done by creationists; why should they want to research anything? - they already have the answers.
Let me elaborate on my original statement above;
Science examines physical evidence and makes testable hypotheses about the nature of that evidence (“given that A appears to lead to B, we should expect C to be true”) - if these hypotheses test true, they add weight to the theory (but they don’t close the case), if they test false, then the theory is modified or scrapped entirely, if new evidence arises that challenges part or all of the theory, again, the theory is modified, new hypotheses are made and tested, it’s a continuous process of trying to understand the universe as best we can given the information available. Much as creationist organisations would love to argue that this is done to promote some hidden agenda (humanism, atheism, whatever), I have to say that I can’t find any evidence of truth in those claims.
Crwationism, on the other hand is different; it has a set of core beliefs/claims which must not be questioned, great effort is made to find evidence which can be interpreted as supporting those claims, any evidence that appears contradictory to the core claims requires hurried construction of an often elaborate explanation to make it fit the claims, at no point will the claims be altered because the evidence doesn’t fit (and there is an overwhelming heap of such evidence; you can only really claim that there isn’t by shutting yourself away from the world and refusing to open your eyes), furthermore, many of the glossy ‘scientific’ assertions made by creationists are little more than propaganda (for example the whole polystrate trees issue). Creationism is fine as a religious viewpoint, but it shouldn’t try to present itself as science, it’s nothing like science and they are not equals; creationism approaches the universe from the other end of the chain of logic.
Now sure, you can probably point out examples of scientists who manipulated evidence to promote their theory, but I suspect that we’d find that most of them were quickly discredited by their peers (again, contrary to creationist propaganda, the scientific community isn’t some dark conspiracy plotting to overthrow religion/faith/God, the plain fact is that when scientists agree with each other it’s not because they have been told to, it’s beacuse they have (often independently) reached the same findings.
Four hundred years ago, this debate would not have been about the origins of life, it would have been about whether the sun orbits the earth or vice versa.