quote:
And finally accept that creationism is not, will never be, science. No ideology springing from a religous text can be construed as science. Period.
Actually, creationism could be practiced scientifically. Of course, it would have remained the failed theory that religious naturalists abandoned long ago in the 17th century if it were scientific.
creationism and creation science - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
"Religious creationism could be scientific, however. For example, if a theory says that the world was created in 4004 B.C. but the evidence indicates that Earth is several billions of years old, then the theory is a scientific one if it is thereby taken to be refuted by the evidence. But if, for example, the ad hoc hypothesis is made that God created the world in 4004 B.C. complete with fossils that make the Earth look much older than it really is (to test our faith, perhaps, or to fulfill some mysterious divine plan), then the religious theory is metaphysical. Nothing could refute it; it is airtight. Philip Henry Gosse made this claim in Darwin?s time in a work entitled Creation (Omphalos): An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot, published in 1857.
If the age or scientific dating techniques of fossil evidence is disputed, but considered relevant to the truth of the religious theory and is prejudged to be consistent with the theory, then the theory is a metaphysical one. A scientific theory cannot prejudge what its investigative outcomes must be. If the religious cosmologist denies that the earth is billions of years old on the grounds that their own ?scientific? tests prove the Earth is very young, then the burden of proof is on the religious cosmologist to demonstrate that the standard scientific methods and techniques of dating fossils, etc., are erroneous. Otherwise, no reasonable person should consider such an unsupported claim that would require us to believe that the entire scientific community is in error. Gish has tried this. The fact that he is unable to convert even a small segment of the scientific community to his way of thinking is a strong indication that his arguments have little merit. This is not because the majority must be right. The entire scientific community could be deluded. However, since the opposition issues from a religious dogmatist who is not doing scientific investigation but theological apologetics, it seems more probable that it is the creation scientists who are deluded rather than the evolutionary scientists."
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"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply
close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands
of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow-
minded."
-Steve Allen, from "Dumbth"