SCIENCE / RULES OF REASONING


The influential National Academy of Sciences, representing the nation's most notable scientists, has argued that the concept of creation is not scientific:

...it fails to display the most basic characteristic of science: reliance upon naturalistic explanations. Instead, proponents of "creation-science" hold that the creation of the universe, the earth, living things, and man was accomplished through supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding." (National Academy of Sciences, 1984)

The National Academy of Sciences simply defined away all alternatives to purely naturalistic evolution by insisting that only naturalistic explanations can be considered in answering questions of ultimate origins. By definition there is no scientific alternative to the idea that "man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind" (Simpson, 1967).

Proponents of "creation-science" or advocates of "intelligent design" have never pretended to explain the mechanism by which the universe, the earth, living things, or man came into existence. For the most part, they have attempted to critique evolutionary theory and to point out areas of the theory which are either untestable or in conflict with empirical data. In so doing, they have inferred that purely mechanistic processes are insufficient to account for the order and complexity of the cosmos. This has provoked an almost religious reaction from the Academy:

"Creation-science" is thus manifestly a device designed to dilute the persuasiveness of the theory of evolution. The dualistic mode of analysis and the negative argumentation employed to accomplish this dilution is, moreover, antithetical to the scientific method." (National Academy of Sciences, 1984)

Berkeley law professor, Phillip E. Johnson, in his recent book, Darwin On Trial, concludes:

"The Academy thus defined "science" in such a way that advocates of supernatural creation may neither argue for their own position nor dispute the claims of the scientific establishment. That may be one way to win an argument, but it is not satisfying to anyone who thinks it possible that God really did have something to do with creating mankind, or that some of the claims that scientists make under the heading of "evolution" may be false." (Johnson, 1991)

"We must ask first whether the theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific or pseudoscientific .... Taking the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, it says that the history of life is a single process of species-splitting and progression. This process must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. This part of the theory is therefore a historical theory, about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test."