Evolution, 4th Edition

578 CHAPTER 22

The beliefs of creationists vary considerably [85]. The most extreme creationists

interpret every statement in the Bible literally. They include “young Earth” cre-

ationists who believe in special creation (the doctrine that each species, living or

extinct, was created independently by God, essentially in its present form) and in

a young universe and Earth (less than 10,000 years old), a deluge that drowned

Earth, and an ark in which Noah preserved a pair of every living species. They

must therefore deny not only evolution, but also most of geology and physics

(including radiometric and astronomical evidence of the great age of the universe).

Some other creationists allow that mutation and natural selection can occur, and

even that very similar species can arise from a common ancestor. However, they

deny that higher taxa have evolved from common ancestors, and they assert that

the human species was specially created by God.

Most of the efforts of activist creationists are devoted to combating the teach-

ing of evolution in schools, or at least insisting on “equal time” for their views. In

the United States, however, the constitutional prohibition of state sponsorship of

religion has been interpreted by the courts to mean that any explicitly religious

version of the origin of life’s diversity cannot be promulgated in public schools. The

activists have therefore adopted several forms of camouflage. One is intelligent

design (ID) theory. ID proponents generally do not publicly invoke special cre-

ation by God, but they argue that many biological phenomena are too complicated

(“irreducibly complex”) to have arisen by natural processes and can therefore be

explained only by an intelligent designer. (See [89] for an analysis of ID.) In an

important court case in 2005, the judge ruled that intelligent design is not science,

but rather thinly disguised religious doctrine.^3 Since then, the creationist strategy

in the United States has been to invoke “critical analysis” or “academic freedom,”

urging that students be encouraged to examine the evidence for both sides of sci-

entific issues—usually limited to evolution, global warming, and perhaps one or

two other socially controversial topics. Of course, every thoughtful person should

develop the habit of critical thinking, but these efforts mainly serve to sow doubt

where, from a scientific perspective, there is little or none.

The nature of science

Science is a process of acquiring an understanding of natural phenomena. This

process consists largely of posing hypotheses and testing them with observational

or experimental evidence. The most important feature of scientific hypotheses is that

they are testable, at least in principle. Sometimes we can test a hypothesis by direct

observation, but more often we infer objects (e.g., atoms) and processes (e.g., DNA

replication) by comparing the outcome of observations or experiments with pre-

dictions made from competing hypotheses. In order to make such inferences, we

must assume that the processes obey natural laws: statements that certain patterns

of events will occur if certain conditions hold. In contrast, supernatural events or

agents are supposed to suspend or violate natural laws.

Scientists can test (and have falsified) many specific creationist claims, such as

the occurrence of a worldwide flood or the claim that Earth and all organisms are

less than 10,000 years old. (This claim about the age of Earth was refuted before

On the Origin of Species was published.) But scientists cannot test the hypothesis

that an omnipotent God exists, or that He created anything, because we do not

know what consistent patterns these hypotheses might predict.

Despite loose talk about “proving” hypotheses, most scientists agree that the

hypothesis that currently best explains the data is provisionally accepted, with the

understanding that it may be altered, expanded, or rejected if subsequent evi-

dence warrants doing so, or if a better hypothesis, not yet imagined, is devised.

(^3) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District.
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