How Can the Study of Creation Be Scientific?
Let me define science.
Science: A field of study, using observations and experiments, to better understand natural phenomena.
Broad, but increasingly precise and concise, relationships (usually mathematical) are sought between causes and effects. These relationships, called scientific laws, help predict future phenomena and explain past events.
Notice, this does not mean that the first cause must be a natural event. It is poor logic to say that because science deals with natural, cause-and-effect relationships, the first cause must be a natural event. Furthermore, if the first cause were a natural consequence of something else, it would not be the first cause. An infinite series of events would have preceded it—with no first cause. Scientific laws can give great insight into ultimate origins, although no mortal, by definition, can duplicate the first cause. Yes, there was a miraculous beginning. [See Items 53 and 55 on page 35.]
Scientific conclusions, while never final, must be based on evidence.
Scientific evidence: Verifiable measurements or observations that support or oppose possible physical explanations.
All evidence in Parts I and II of this book was observed, natural phenomena that others can check. (This book also contains 58 testable and potentially falsifiable predictions.) To most people, this evidence implies a creation and a global flood. This does not mean that we can scientifically study the Creator (The First Cause) or that the Bible should be read in public-school science classes. (I have always opposed that.) Those who want evolution taught without the clear evidence opposing it, in effect, wish to censor a large body of scientific evidence from schools. That is wrong. Also, the consequences of a global flood have been misinterpreted as evidence for evolution, not as evidence for a flood. That misinterpretation, unfortunately, is taught as science. [See Part II.]
Figure 5: Causes and Effects. Each arrow’s tail represents a cause, and each yellow circle represents an effect. The arrow itself represents the cause-to-effect relationship. Yellow circles also represent scientific evidence that, to most people, suggests a creation and a global flood. All of us, including students, should be free to reach our own conclusions about origins after learning the evidence and all reasonable explanations. Withholding that information in schools and misrepresenting it in the media are inexcusable.
The first cause appears to be supernatural, or beyond the natural (blue area). Evolutionists often say that the yellow circles and their scientific implications cannot be presented in science classrooms, because the first cause (red circle) is supernatural. Subjects outside the natural (including biblical descriptions of creation and the flood that are so consistent with the physical evidence) are inappropriate for publicly financed science education. However, excluding what is observable and verifiable in nature, along with possible causes, is bad science, misleading, and censorship. Creation science, then, is the study of this scientific evidence.
Others may someday propose an explanation that (1) is consistent with all that evidence and (2) demonstrable by repeatable, cause-and-effect relationships. Until that happens, those who ignore known evidence are being quite unscientific. Evolutionists’ refusal to debate this subject of how the universe, life, and Earth began (see pages 586– 587) and their speculations on undemonstratable phenomena also show poor science, especially when so much evidence refutes those speculations.
Evolutionists raise several objections. Some say, “Although the evidence may imply a sudden beginning, creation is supernatural (not natural), so we cannot entertain creation as a scientific explanation.” Of course, no one understands scientifically how the universe came into existence—how space, time, matter, and the laws of physics began. [See Figure 253 on page 550 and the paragraph preceding that figure.] Others, not disputing that the flood best explains many features on Earth, object to a global flood, because the Bible—a document they may reject, describes that flood in great detail. Others object to the starting point for the flood (given on page 128), but in science, all starting points are possibilities. The primary question must always be, “What best explains all the evidence?”
Also, the source of a scientific idea does not need to be scientifically derived. For example, Friedrich Kekulé discovered the ring structure of benzene in a dream in which a snake grabbed its tail. Kekulé’s discovery laid the basis for structural chemistry. Again, what is important is not the source of an idea, but whether all evidence supports it better than any other explanation. Science, after all, is a search for the truth about how the physical universe behaves. Therefore, let’s teach all the science.