For nearly a century a battle has raged in our country over the nature of science and how it should be taught to public school students. When Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859 based on his observations of various animal species during his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, it immediately crystallized a growing disagreement between the proponents of a divinely inspired origin to life on Earth and those who looked for a natural explanation for the multitude of species.
Early in the 20th century there was an increasing emphasis on teaching this new concept to students. However, by the mid-1920s, a number of states began passing legislation prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The most notable of these was the Butler Act of 1925, passed by the state of Tennessee. This legislation was the basis of the famous Scopes "monkey trial," which was fictionalized in the play "Inherit the Wind."
By the 1960s there was near-universal acceptance of Darwin’s ideas. With the repeal of the Butler Act in 1967 the last vestiges of the opposition to teaching evolution had faded away. However, a new form of anti-Darwinist backlash was taking hold in the guise of "creation science." Rather than continue to fight a losing battle to keep students from learning about the scientifically approved version for the origin development of life on Earth, fundamentalist Christians chose to follow a different tactic.
They spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to disprove evolution via natural selection. They would argue that their ideas deserved equal time in the public debate. They encouraged like-minded supporters to run for school boards and to then implement their agenda by requiring alternative explanations be taught in science classroom.
Unfortunately for the proponents of biblical creationism the one thing that they haven’t tried to do is conform to the established guidelines on what actually constitutes science. There is a good reason for that. It is because the arguments in support of their ideas never actually enter the realm of science.
What is science?
According to the practitioners of science, there are certain irrefutable characteristics for any concept to fall within the realm of science. Among these are the following:
- It is guided by natural law;
- It explains the empirical evidence already collected;
- It makes testable predictions;
- Its conclusions are tentative and it acknowledges its own limitations; and
- It is falsifiable.
By any account, the story of creationism fails each and every one of these requirements. The essential basis of creationism depends upon belief in a supernatural source, beyond the scope of natural law. It flatly rejects the wealth of scientific data collected across a broad range of disciplines since the dawn of the scientific reformation. It fails to make any testable predictions and insists that the answers must conform to a predisposed conclusion. It denies its own limitations and any attempt to expunge it from reality. Lastly, it is simply not falsifiable.
What is creationism?
I have spent hours trying to answer this question. As an atheist, I truly have no conception of what constitutes creationism. I have been steeped in the disciplines of science throughout my adult life and have difficulty reconciling the statements made by proponents of this particular concept with my understanding of how the universe actually functions.
Recognizing and admitting my limitations regarding creationism, I will attempt to describe this story as best I can. The central theme of creationism appears to be biblical inerrancy. That is, the words found in the Bible were literally handed down directly from a supreme being, generally referred to as God. As such, they are not to be questioned or modified or rejected by the faithful. If, according to Genesis, God created the heavens and the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh, then believers take that in a literal sense. As an atheist, a question I have is if God is omnipotent, why did he need to rest?
Young-Earth creationists, who represent a sizable fraction of all believers in this biblical story, make the additional assumption that our planet (and indeed the entire universe) came into existence about 6000 years ago. This date is based on the works of Archbishop James Ussher (Church of Ireland) in the mid-17th century, who examined the Bible and other sources to determine the "date of creation." His analysis resulted in a date of 23 Oct 4004 B.C.
As an astronomer, the adherence to this analysis by young-Earth creationists leaves me baffled. I routinely use my own telescope to observe galaxies that are millions of light years away. For instance, when viewing the Andromeda Galaxy, the light my eyes detect left nearly three million years ago, back when our distant ancestors were first learning to walk upright on the plains of Africa.
I look at the images and spectra of objects that are even more distant which are acquired with professional telescopes. I thrill to the latest discoveries of my fellow stargazers who push back the limits of our ignorance to address questions related to how the universe has come into existence.
I had the privilege back in 1989 to attend the launch of the Cosmic Background Explorer at Vandenberg AFB in California. This satellite has revolutionized our understanding of the conditions present in the early universe a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. The Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope have each made fundamental scientific contributions to this picture of how our universe originated and evolved over the past 13.7 billion years.
Radiological dating techniques of meteorites and of ancient rocks show that our solar system first formed about 4.6 billion years ago and that the Earth began to cool around 3.9 billion years ago. The earliest confirmed fossil evidence for life dates to a few hundred million years after this time period. Thus, the continued adherence to a belief in a young Earth flies in the face of all of the scientific evidence.
All of this constitutes empirical data that have been painstakingly acquired over the past several centuries by dedicated professional scientists. None of it supports the pronouncements made by the proponents of creationism. When they attempt to make arguments based on science, their naiveté and lack of depth is painfully evident.
Lastly, I would like to address the subject of falsifiability in greater depth. One of the hallmarks of any scientific theory is that there must be some manner by which it could be shown to be incorrect. Without this feature, then all of the results of science would be suspect. We couldn’t really reject the notion that the Earth was flat. We couldn’t really reject the notion that leeching blood would cure disease. We couldn’t really reject the notion that your bundle of joy arrived via the stork.
Whenever I encounter a proponent of creationism, I ask them to suggest an experiment that I can conduct or an observation that I could make in which the results could conclusively demonstrate to them that their idea is wrong. It is a challenge that has yet to have any response.
Perhaps one such observation may be the discovery of intelligent extra-terrestrial life. If SETI were to acquire an unambiguous signal from the depths of space, would that be sufficient proof of biblical errancy? After all, there is no mention of life beyond the Earth in the Bible. It would be a rather large gap to have left out.
Without such an empirical test that could conclusively disprove the concept, it is not acceptable to teach creationism as science. It has no business being discussed in any public school science class and to insist on having it taught based on a notion of "equal time" rejects the very important notion that students should be learning science in those classrooms.
(this article crossposted from 6degrees Astroblog)