Creationists versus the Scientific Method
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[edit] Introduction
There are various scientific propositions, such as that the Earth is old, that Noah's Flood didn't happen, that evolution did happen, and so forth, that creationists would like to prove unscientific.
Unfortunately for them, they can't. Some creationists have therefore adopted a different strategy: they will redefine the scientific method in such a way that all the scientific results that irk and vex them would, by their definition of the scientific method, not count as science.
A curious aspect of the creationist rewrite of the scientific method is that they seem blissfully unaware that it is a rewrite --- they appear to believe that they are describing the scientific method. But if they thought about it for a few seconds, they would realize that it is those pesky scientists who are producing all these annoying facts that they don't like. The scientific method is, obviously, the method followed by scientists to produce scientific results. What creationists have come up with is a new method of reasoning used exclusively by creationists and ignored by scientists, and as such it can only accurately be described as the "creationist method".
[edit] The "creationist method"
The creationist approach to the scientific method is to rewrite the scientific method so that every aspect of science that annoys them falls outside their rewrite and can therefore be deemed "unscientific", and hence just as faith-based as their own beliefs.
Now, the key thing that creationists object to about science is that it produces facts about the history of the Earth and the Universe that conflict with their myths about the same subject. Admittedly there are other aspects of science they don't like, such as the constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum, the constancy of radioactive decay rates, the existence of intermediate forms in the fossil record, and ... well, pretty much every field of science except electricity. But they dislike these facts only because they give support to historical propositions about the universe. If they could only establish that it was impossible to discover anything about the past by studying the present, then they could leave the rest of science alone.
The essence of the "creationist method", then, is to construct a definition of "science" such that it is not scientific to claim to know about the past history of the Universe in general, or the Earth in particular, by studying evidence available in the present.
[edit] Construction of the creationist method
It would seem that creationists have set themselves an impossible task. For of course we test a hypothesis about the past in exactly the same way that we test a hypothesis against the present: by comparing the logical consequences of the hypothesis against evidence that we can observe in the present.
Creationists get around that by trying to limit the kinds of evidence that we can use to test our hypotheses.
One common maneuver is to insist that only the results of experiments can be considered evidence. This is of course contrary to the actual scientific method, in which all observations count as evidence, and experiments are merely one useful way of eliciting observations.
Rewriting the scientific method in this way serves the creationist purpose of rendering our knowledge of history unscientific. For it is not by performing experiments that we know about the past, but by observation of the evidence that remains in the present. However, it goes too far. For it is also not by experiment that we know that pigs don't have wings: and even the most brazen of creationists would find it difficult to deny that this is amongst the facts that science is well able to establish.
Similar remarks apply to creationist claims about "reproducibility", or "repeatability", or "replication". According to this argument, we cannot consider a proposition scientific unless we can repeat it. Again, this is different from the actual scientific method, which insists that the observations on which we base our claims should be repeatable, rather than the events that we're making claims about.
Now, this rewrite of the scientific method serves the creationist cause well enough. We cannot reproduce (for example) the evolution of birds any more than we can repeat (for example) the assassination of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. However, like their idea about experiments, this seems to go too far. Even a creationist with long experience of denying reality would find it hard to deny that the Moon exists, and that this is a scientific fact. And yet we cannot reproduce the Moon: we can only reproduce the observations that convince us that it exists.
To get round the objection we have just raised, i.e. that it is scientific to say that pigs don't have wings, and that the Moon exists, creationists will then make an exemption for direct observation. We can see that pigs don't have wings, we can see that the Moon exists, so they'll allow that to be scientific.
How direct this direct observation has to be, creationists don't say. Physicists, for example, don't directly observe sub-atomic particles, they observe the evidence for them, and interpret this evidence in accordance with well-established theories of physics. We have never seen a creationist expand on this point, and say whether, on the one hand, particle physicists aren't doing science, or on the other hand, if creationists have some criterion which makes that sort of observation direct enough that they'll count it as science. If we ever come across an answer, we shall update this article; until then, we shall simply note the difficulty and move on.
This criterion of direct observation serves creationists' purposes. For they can point out that no-one has ever observed evolution, scientists can point out that oh yes they have, and then creationists can say that no-one has ever directly observed the entire history of evolution, which is what they should have said in the first place, and which is actually true. At this point creationists are prone to go about declaring that it is impossible to have knowledge of the past without a time machine.
We may note, as usual, that this idea of direct observation is not at all part of the scientific method as practiced by scientists: for example, no-one has been to the Earth's core to verify that it is hot, and no scientist (nor, so far as we know, any creationist) decries this claim as unscientific. And, as usual, this criterion goes too far. Consider the proposition that President Lincoln was assassinated. This is not reproducible, it is not an experimental result, and no-one can directly observe it. Do we have to deny that the evidence is sufficient to support it?
At this point many creationists will make one final concession. We are allowed to accept as evidence the documentary evidence produced by people. This is a strange sort of concession. After all, in our experience people lie much more often than the inanimate evidence such as stars and rocks on which scientists rest their account of the history of the Universe. We have heard of documents being faked: we have never heard of a supernova being faked. Nonetheless, let us grant the creationists this concession and see (in the next section) how far all this will get them.
This summarizes the usual creationist construction of the "creationist method": we are allowed to use, as evidence the following: the results of experiments; direct observations (where the term "direct observation" is ill-defined); and documentary evidence (though documents that don't agree with creationist beliefs will be discarded).
[edit] Problems with the creationist method
The problem is that the "creationist method" still goes too far: it abolishes too much of science. The proposition that the Earth's core is hot, for example, or that the Sun consists mostly of hydrogen, do not rest either on direct observation, or repeatable experiments, or on documentary evidence or eyewitness testimony. They are inferences that scientists can legitimately draw from the evidence before them. Are such facts, then, to be excluded from science? But perhaps some creationist might answer: "yes". They might be willing to throw out such facts so long as they can also discard facts about the history of the Earth and the Sun. Let us therefore turn our attention to the effect that the creationist method has on the historical sciences.
Consider, for example, a man found dead with a bullet in his heart, an entry wound in his chest, powder burns on his shirt, and a smoking gun lying next to him. Any forensic scientist would find that powerful evidence that he was shot. But what are we to conclude if we apply the "creationist method"? If we cannot know about the past by studying the evidence in the present, then we cannot come to that conclusion unless we were there when he was shot, or have eyewitness testimony, or own a time machine. If we were to follow the creationist method, we should have to say that there can be no scientific evidence as to whether or not he was shot, and that the belief that he was shot rested only on unscientific faith and the "materialist philosophical presupposition" that God didn't just magic the crime scene into existence without anyone shooting the dead man in question.
Consider, as another example, the proposition that dinosaurs once roamed the Earth. There are no relevant experiments, there is no eyewitness testimony, there is no direct observation. All we have are the bones of dinosaurs, plus the observation (made in the present) that you don't get bones without having a living creature first. From this we would conclude that there were once living dinosaurs: but the creationist method forbids us from drawing this conclusion. That would be like measuring a star to be a million light-years away, noting that it takes a million years to travel that distance, and concluding that the light that we observe started out a million years ago. This, in creationist thought, is the horrid sin of uniformitarianism: we would be using laws of nature confirmed in the present to find out something about the past.
Or consider an apple bought in the supermarket. If asked to explain its origins, we should say that it grew on an apple tree. We should say so in the absence of experimental evidence, of eyewitness testimony, or of documentary evidence --- because we know that apples grow on apple trees. But again, this would be the sin of uniformitarianism. We would be applying our knowledge of botanical processes to find out the origin of the apple, and this would be a godless materialistic alternative to supposing that God just poofed it into existence by magic. To use our knowledge of botanical processes to come to a conclusion about the origin of the apple would be like using our knowledge of geological processes to come to a conclusion about the origin of a rock.
At this point the reader may be inclined to protest. "Surely", the reader will say: "Surely, a creationist wouldn't actually deny that the apple came from an apple tree, or hold it equally probable that God poofed it into existence by magic? Are you not setting up a straw man?" Now, it is true that most creationists would accept that the apple came from an apple tree. But if they really believed in the creationist method, then they would have to say that this was a conclusion that could only be sustained by faith, that there is no scientific evidence for it, that saying that the apple grew on an apple tree was a conclusion not warranted by their version of the scientific method, and that the God-poofing-it-into-existence hypothesis would be equally good.
The fact is that in this matter creationists are shameless hypocrites. When they need to deny some fact such as the age of the Earth, or the non-occurrence of Noah's Flood, or that evolution has occurred, or any other fact that contradicts creationist dogma, they will wheel out the creationist method, and stoutly deny that any facts that we can observe in the present support the conclusions we draw about the past. But when it comes to any conclusion that doesn't conflict with creationist dogma, such as that the apple grew on an apple tree, then they can suddenly be as sane as the rest of us, and accept the results of the real scientific method as practiced by scientists.
[edit] The creationist method versus creation science
The reader may well have noticed that the creationist method pretty much shreds "creation science". How can a creationist claim to have scientific evidence supporting, for example, the Biblical account of Noah's Flood, if he also claims that science can't prove anything about the past? The answer has been indicated above: creationist are shameless hypocrites. They do not indulge in this hypocrisy consciously, so far as we know: on the contrary, our observations show that the creationist mentality is particularly apt to hold completely contradictory views without noticing it in the slightest.
It is perfectly possible for a creationist to first maintain that geology can tell us nothing about the Earth's history, and then to go straight on and maintain that geology proves that the Earth is young and that Noah's Flood really happened. We have seen more extraordinary cases of the same faculty of doublethink: for example, a creationist maintaining in the same paragraph that Archaeopteryx has the anatomy of a modern bird, and that it is a fake produced by adding feathers to a fossil dinosaur. So we should hardly be surprised that they don't notice this more relatively subtle contradiction in their propaganda.
The nearest a creationist gets to consistency is to consistently defend his dogma. When he maintains that science can prove nothing about the past, and so can't prove that the Earth is old, he is defending his dogma. And when he maintains that science has proved that the Earth is young, he is also defending his dogma. He sees no contradiction there. Our experience shows that it takes extraordinary effort to show such a man how his ideas are self-contradictory. After all, if that was the sort of thing that he could easily understand, he'd have figured it out for himself. And he would probably not be a creationist.
[edit] The creationist method as the last resort
The fact that creationists need to produce the "creationist method" exposes the extreme weakness of their case.
For if there was any solid evidence of, for example, Noah's Flood, or a young Earth, then would creationists be promoting this extreme brand of epistemological relativism, according to which science can't tell us anything about the past, and all historical beliefs must be based solely on faith? In a hypothetical world in which they were right, would they not be completely happy to abide by the actual scientific method, as practiced by scientists, and smugly point out that science had proved them right?
They are like a criminal caught in commission of a crime who then proceeds to deny that there's a difference between right and wrong, or like a liar caught in a lie, who then denies that there's a distinction between truth and falsehood. No honest man needs to resort to such philosophies. In the same way, creationists have been caught peddling unscientific rubbish as "creation science" --- and so they produce a philosophy in which there is no such thing, in scientific terms, as being right or wrong about the past.
Meanwhile, their opponents do not need to resort to such a philosophy, and are happy to say that yes, it is possible to use evidence observed in the present to draw conclusions about the past.
And it is obvious from this whose side all the evidence is on.
