Many of you will be familiar with the scientific method. You make an hypothesis, you test the predictions of that hypothesis and reformulate that hypothesis if it doesn’t match the observations. Once that hypothesis has been confirmed and corroborated by others, then it moves into the realm of scientific theory.
How exactly, then, does creation ”science’ work? What is, if you will, the creationist method?
I ask because there is an image on the
EvoWiki page for creationism, that looks like this:
We at EvoWiki have (rightly in my mind) received criticism of this image. One user, going by the name 'Silence', says
quote:
To suggest that nonacceptance of evolution is integral (and, worse, the starting point) of creationist methodology is both an oversimplification of the issue (what about the type of thought that leads someone to reject evolution?)
Which is a good point, in my mind. Likewise the next point:
quote:
Third, most creationists do not rely on quote-mining; this is an extremely common practice, but neither a definingly creationistic one, nor an ubiquitous one among all creationists. I've met more creationists who don't resort to quote-mining than who do; the fact that a large number do is not sufficient to say that all (or even most) creationists resort to this practice.
Also valid, from my experience. Lastly:
quote:
"Bad logic" is also just exceedingly vague, and consequently useless; such vagueness characterizes most of the rest of the "Creationist" side of the image in the same way, and is the reason why most of the image is similarly useless (if not outright disingenuous).
So, I’ve established that the flow chart isn’t very good at the moment.
How should it go? Given that Intelligent Design and Old-Earth Creationism are creationism too, we should also look for a method that encompasses those too. It is for this reason I am asking for help, as I’d intended to start with the point: “The Bible is literally true”, but I don’t think that does encompass enough creationism. However, I certainly do think that the Bible is used as a semi-scientific text, and science is checked against it.
So, how would this flow chart go? Likely it will be much more complex than the scientific method, as the creationists have used many methods, but I hope we can trim all the bushy parts down to a core 'creationist method'.
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