People Don't Know What Creation Science Is

In the wrong thread, Evolutionary Biology as a Science: Most of us do already know what "creation science" is. I've been following this since about 1981, have read quite a bit of creationist materials, and have also corresponded with both Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). We've come to grips with "creation science", but have you?I assume that you have only been at this for a short time, especially given how impressed you obviously are with the lackluster book, "What is Creation Science?", which is rather typical creationist fare. Perhaps I should share with you something that I personally witnessed, since I feel that you are yourself in the same position as that young creationist:

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About twenty years ago a creationist was hosting a series of amateur-night creation/evolution debates in which the members of the audience were invited to get up and make presentations. One young creationist (I would judge him to have been about 18 to 21 years old) got up and announced that he had some new hard science that would blow the evolutionists away: the speed of light has been slowing down! The pro-evolution half of the audience immediately burst into uncontrollable laughter. That claim of Setterfield's had already been known to them for a decade, it had been refuted many times, and they started to explain to the poor hapless creationist exactly why that claim was false. The poor kid didn't know what had hit him.

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Also a propos is this quote by a former young-earth creationist, Steve Rauch (from The Effect of Scientific Error in Christian Apologetics at No webpage found at provided URL: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/whocares.htm, circa 1998):

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About a year and a half ago, I was a firm special creationist. I am now a believer in evolution; not even sure if God is required. In 1995, Glenn Morton wrote to Stephen Jones about Stephen's provisional acceptance of common descent (as quoted by SJ Sunday, January 11, 1998 5:16 PM), "I know exactly how difficult a paradigm shift like that is." Well, let me tell you, the shift is absolutely devastating. I'm still struggling with all this. I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed.

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BTW, that is on Glenn Morton's site. Morton started out as a young-earth creationist, everything he knew about geology he learned from the ICR, and he had even written several flood-geology articles for a creationist journal. But then he went to work as a field geologist and hired several other creationists trained by the ICR. They all suffered severe crises of faith from the rock-hard evidence they had to work with every day which the ICR had taught them did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning. Glenn and another of those geologists share their story, along with others, at No webpage found at provided URL: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/person.htm.

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So, here's what "creation science" is. It is a legalistic deception that the anti-evolution movement put together when they lost use of "monkey laws" after Epperson vs Arkansas (1968). Since the early 1920's, they had been able to bar the teaching of evolution in the public schools without hiding the religious basis of those laws, but that was struck down in 1968. Since they could not reveal their religious purpose, that is exactly what they did: hide the Bible. They took a body of writings that had been developing for the past decade or so (eg, Morris' "The Genesis Flood"), superficially scrubbed them of overt religious references, and named it "creation science" or "scientific creationism". Then they started campaigning to have this "creation science" included in the science classroom in order to counter the teaching of evolution. These attempts would be called "equal time" and "balanced treatment" and always with the same claims you have made here, that it's purely scientific and that there's nothing religious about it. BTW, the ICR was instrumental in creating this movement and was also the primary source for such "public school" materials.Interestingly, when these "public school" materials were used in a fifth-grade class in Livermore, CA, it resulted in a number of the students becoming atheists. Because these "public school" materials from the ICR that were "completely scientific and non-religious" repeatedly urged the students to make a personal choice between its unnamed "Creator" and "God-less evolution". Those students could see how ridiculous the claims were, so they followed the ICR's instructions and became atheists. Interestingly, when I visited the ICR in Santee, CA, I'm sure I saw a stone quarry just down the road from them. I wonder if they supplied the ICR with millstones.After a decade of their campaigning, a model "balanced treatment" state law was drafted circa 1980 and led to the passing of laws in Arkansas and Louisiana. The Arkansas law was struck down first, while the Lousiana case made it to the US Supreme Court. As a result, the courts now knew what "creation science" is and that it is purely religious. Having lost another tool, the anti-evolution movement then took another anti-evolution idea that was being developed, "intelligent design", and started employing it as their new legalistic smoke-screen. It was at that time that "Of Pandas and People" switched from being a "creation science" book to being an "intelligent design" book as it was superficially edited -- literally via a find-and-replace function in the word processor, which munged up one of the edits, leaving the smoking-gun for the courts to find that "intelligent design" is just another disguise for "creation science", just depriving the anti-evolution movement of its latest deception. Now we're waiting to see what subterfuge they come up with next.The essential approach of "creation science" is its "Two-Model Approach" (TMA). Since the TMA is a classic example of deception through the False Dilemma (AKA "False Dichotomy"), I cannot recommend too strongly that you read up on that informal fallacy: the Wikipedia article is at False dilemma - Wikipedia and you will find many more pages on the topic if you Google on the term. Very basically, in a dichotomy you have a finite number -- usually 2 -- of choices -- usually mutually exclusive -- to choose from. By eliminating the wrong choices, you can prove the only remaining choice to be correct. This is often used correctly in mathematical proofs as "proof by contradiction" in which to prove something you assume the opposite and then show that opposite to be lead to a false result. The methodology suggested by a dichotomy is to discover or prove the true choice by eliminating all the other choices.However, the dichotomy becomes false when you leave out choices or substitute the real choices with false ones. The only reasons for creating a false dichotomy are sloppy thinking or deception. In the case of the TMA, the primary reason is deception, though its propagation through the creationist community is largely through sloppy thinking.In just about every Gish or H. Morris presentation, debate, radio/TV appearance that I've seen or heard or read the transcript of, plus most of their books, the very first thing they would do would be to try to establish the TMA, to insist that there are two and only two mutually exclusive models: the "creation model" and the "evolution model". Then they employ the methodology of a dichotomy by proving the "creation model" solely by attempting to eliminate the "evolution model", without ever presenting any evidence for the "creation model", or discussing it, or defending it, or even presenting it. One humorous but true description of the TMA is a book of two chapters: Chapter One is "Evolution" and Chapter Two is "Everything that's wrong with Chapter One." The TMA attempts to prove creation solely by attacking evolution. All the "evidence" of "creation science" is negative evidence against its "evolution model"; no creationist has ever presented any positive evidence for creation, not even Dr. Henry Morris. I know, because I asked him directly and he insisted that negative evidence against evolution constituted positive evidence for creation, as per the TMA.The TMA is false because it leaves out several other "models", including actual evolution. Which brings us to the other reason why the TMA is false: because its two "models" are themselves false. At best, the "evolution model" is a grossly distorted caricature, a misleading misrepresentation. But Morris revealed that it is even worse, in that he directly stated that the "atheistic evolution model" also includes most of the world's religions, both ancient and modern. So basically, the TMA consists of a very specific "creation model" (even though they carefully make it sound very vague, even "non-religious", so as to sneak it past the courts) and an extremely broad "evolution model" that includes everything that's not in the "creation model". This makes it impossible for the TMA to prove the "creation model", because it has made it impossible to ever disprove the "evolution model".Which doesn't matter to the framers of the TMA, since their goal was never to prove creation. The true goal of "creation science" was very succinctly expressed by Paul Ellwanger, the framer of the model bill that spawned the Arkansas and Louisiana "balanced treatment" laws:

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... -- the idea of killing evolution instead of playing these debating games that we've been playing for nigh over a decade already.

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It's only been later, as "creation science" has spread and infected the creationist community and integrated itself with their apologetics and proselytizing, that creationists themselves have started looking for it to provide evidence and proof of their faith, something that faith should never require.One thing to note is that the claims of "creation science" were not suddenly created ex nihilo. Rather, there had been a long tradition of creationists trying to find scientific evidence supporting their beliefs. Plus, there had been a long tradition of anti-evolution writing. The first major anti-evolution effort came after WWI and reached a peak in the 1920's, mainly subsiding after the public embarassment and the loss of their leader after the Scopes Trial, though mollified by their success in keeping evolution out of the schools, a victory that lasted them for four decades. Many of the current claims that blame evolution for all social ills started in the post-WWI movement. The founders of the ICR had already been doing their work in the early 1960's, mainly in reaction to the ASA (an Christian association of scientists) not taking a strong enough stance for young-earth creationism. Remember that Henry Morris' "The Genesis Flood" was published in 1961 and was itself largely based (though without attribution) on the writings of George McCready Price in the 20's and 30's. It was that body of work that led to the new creationists' own writings which, like their predecessors, were overtly and overwhelmingly religious in tone and nature. And it was those new religious writings that were scrubbed of all overt religious references so that they could serve as "public school editions", though it was blatantly clear to anyone who read them that they were religious -- under testimony in the Arkansas trial, the teacher in charge of developing the new "balanced treatment" curriculum was at a loss for suitable creationist materials because everything the ICR offered her was too blatantly religious.This actually raises some hope for "creation science", or rather for the claim of scientific evidence supporting your beliefs. Certainly, there must have been some scrupulous scientists conducting such research on their own. Scientists who maintained the proper rigor in their work, such that their results could be of value. Why don't we ever hear of them? I suspect it is because the creationist community does not value their work. Creationists don't want to learn the truth; they just want to convince people! They want to convince new converts, and they want to convince themselves. They don't even care whether a claim is true or false (as evidenced by creationists who continue to spread the same false claims even after those claims had been decisively proven to them to be false), but only that it sounds convincing. Let's face it, an honest result phrased in properly tentative fashion just won't sound convincing. Now, moon dust or sea salt or radiodating or the earth's slowing rotation or chicken proteins! Now those sound convincing, even though they are utterly false.

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There, from nearly three decades of following this so-called "controversy" (ie, it's purely a creationist invention), in a very condensed package is what we have discovered "creation science" to be. If you disagree and truly believe that it is something entirely different, then you need to show us, to demonstrate conclusively, that it is different.Please heed what Asgara told you in that other thread:

Actually, the good thing that we all hope will come out of this is for a creationist to finally, after all these decades, try to present some positive evidence for creation. IOW, for a creationist to finally make an honest attempt.Personally, I don't think she's up to it. I do not doubt her sincerity. Rather, I believe that she is a relative new-comer to creation/evolution. All she knows is what she's read and heard from creationists. Like that kid I described, she thinks that she has some new really great stuff that will just blow those evolutionists away. What she does not yet know is that she's been fed a steady diet of PRATTs, tired old false claims that we are all both very familiar with and aware of the refutation of those claims. She does not yet have the sense of history of the claims that many of us have. Still, we would dearly love to see a creationist make an honest attempt for once.I had to leave a number of things out. Like Glenn Morton, after having struggled with his experience for a decade which had started out with "creation science" having pushed him to the verge of atheism, contacting all the creationist geologist who had suffered similarly and asking each of them if there was even one thing the ICR had taught them, one "insurmountable problem for geology", that had turned out to be true and none of them could think of even one.Or Thwaites and Awbrey, who had for years conducted a balanced-treatment class at their university in which professional creationists gave half the lectures; they finally had to stop the class because of the continuous protests by Christian campus clubs against the class. As I had written on my old site (host dropped out of the business):

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In 1977, they pioneered the successful debating strategy of researching creation science claims beforehand and then presenting what the evidence really showed or what the misquoted source had actually said.

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In 1993, they announced their retirement from the fray and described their very last debate on 1993 April 29. The description of the debate was preceeded by a summation of their experiences in those 15 years, of what they had hoped to learn, and of what they had learned. They had entered into debates with the hope and expectation that:

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... a creationist would dig up a real biological paradox, one that would prove to be an interesting brain-teaser for the scientific community. We hoped that we could use the creationists to ferret out biological enigmas much as DEA agents use dogs to seek out contraband. ... While we had discovered that every creationist claim so far could easily be disproved, we still had hope that there was a genuine quandary in there somewhere. We just hadn't found it yet."

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What did they discover after those 15 years? Complete disillusionment with the creationists. None of the creationists ever presented any real paradoxes or genuine quandaries. The creationists had no actual case to present.
(Thwaites, W., and F. Awbrey 1993. Our last debate; our very last.
Creation/Evolution 33:1-4.)

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Or I met with a creationist friend from work at a debate in 1985 in which Thwaites and Awbrey matched up against Gish and Morris. First off, my friend was very uneasy about all the creationist books on the bombardier beetle. Our discussions at work had started with my asking him about the Christian teachings about lying. Gish claimed that the chemicals the beetle use will explode spontaneously when mixed, so at Thwaite and Awbrey's class, they mixed the chemicals together to prove Gish's claim wrong. Gish admitted publicly in the class that he was wrong, yet the ICR and even Gish continued to use the claim, even though slightly modified. But as we left the debate, my friend was nearly in shock. He just kept muttering something like: "We have mountains of evidence. Why didn't they present it? They could have blown those evolutionists away. Why didn't they? We have mountains of evidence. Where is it?" Shortly after that, the contract was cancelled and we went to different companies. Five years later, I bumped into him at the local community college (software types need constant reeducation). He was still a fundamentalist Christian, but he hated creationists!Also at that debate I heard Morris make a claim about a "1976" NASA document that showed through direct measurements that there should be nearly 200 feet of meteoric dust on the moon's surface if it were really billions of years old. I wrote to them and Gish sent me a copy of a letter by Harold Slusher with his calculations on it. He cited the NASA document as "Volume II" in the series and written in "1976". When I found it in our university library, it was Volume 11 (eleven) in the series, was a collection of papers presented in 1965 and was printed in 1967. Furthermore, Slusher misrepresented the paper he had quoted in order to inflate his figures by a factor of 10,000; when corrected, his calculations actually predicted a third of an inch of dust accumulation.The point is that if any of those creationists had ever looked at the document, then they would have immediately corrected that mistake. But when I wrote back to Gish and included xerox copies of the title pages, he denied the truth and continued to insist on the "1976" date. I wrote him again and again included the xerox copies and directed him to them explicitly. No reply. A few months later, their newsletter, which I was receiving, mentioned that Gish would give a talk at the local junior college, so I went and afterwards asked him about it. He denied knowing anything about any moondust claim, but offered to pass my question and address on to somebody at the ICR who would know. Never got any answer, but my newsletter suddenly stopped coming. When I mentioned that to Dr. Eugenie Scott of the NCSE, even she was shocked at such behavior from Gish.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

Not "speculative philosophy", New Girl, but creationist philosophy! BTW, I just addressed you as "New Girl" in the spirit of an combat unit refering to its new member as "New Guy!", especially when his newbie ignorance caused him to do something stupid that could have jeopardized the entire unit. You're too new at this to have heard of the "Omphalos Argument" and its parodies, so you'd better start learning.The Omphalos Argument was an early creationist attempt to counter the ever-mounting evidence for the earth's great age. Surprisingly, modern creationist continue to make Omphalos-like arguments. From the Wikipedia article (Omphalos hypothesis - Wikipedia):

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The Omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, "Omphalos" by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (omphalos is Greek for "navel"), and that therefore no evidence that we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable. The idea has seen some revival in the twentieth century by some modern creationists, who have extended the argument to light that appears to originate in far-off stars and galaxies, although many other creationists reject this explanation (and also believe that Adam and Eve had no navels).

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Gosse inadvertantly created a problem, because such a creator would have created deceptive fake evidence:

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From a religious viewpoint, it can be interpreted as God having 'created a fake,' such as illusions of light in space of stellar explosions (supernovae) that never really happened, or volcanic mountains that were never really volcanoes in the first place and that never actually experienced erosion. Some theologians feel it is not consistent with most benevolent theistic theologies that God would create appearances that are so completely deceiving to every level of detail.

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Another issue that it raised was, just when did this false history start?:

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Though Gosse's original Omphalos hypothesis specifies a popular creation story, others have proposed that the idea does not preclude creation as recently as five minutes ago, including memories of times before this created in situ. This idea is sometimes called "Last Thursdayism" by its opponents, as in "the world might as well have been created last Thursday." The concept is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable through any conceivable scientific methodin other words, it is impossible even in principle to subject it to any form of test by reference to any empirical data because the empirical data themselves are considered to have been arbitrarily created to look the way they do at every observable level of detail.

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Which brings us to the origin of the good Captain's point:

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Last Thursdayism is a response to omphalism which posits that, by the same logic, the world might have been created last Thursday (or by implication, on any given date and time), but with the appearance of age: people's memories, history books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and so forth. It is aimed at the logic point that when this logic is permitted, it can be used to prove any "fixed date creation" schema. The first known reference is on November 5, 1992, in a post titled "Last Thursdayism proven!", responding to an apocalyptic prediction:

As everyone knows, it was predicted that the world would end last Wednesday at 10:00 PST. Since there appears to be a world in existence now, the entire universe must therefore have been recreated, complete with an apparent "history", last *Thursday*. QED.

It developed on talk.origins into a satiric parody religion with a catechism; other postings started the "heretical" splinter groups Last Wednesdayism and Last Fridayism. Another version, claiming not to be a parody, incorporates ideas from solipsism.

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You have a lot of reading and learning to do if you ever want to catch up with us and be able to carry on a discussion about "creation science", New Girl!. But we are more than willing to help you learn what you need to know, unlike certain arrogant people who refuse to but rather insist that we first read a low-quality creationist book.Edited by dwise1, :

No, sorry, still doesn't. Never has, never will. Haven't you read that Wikipedia article yet? How can you catch up with us, New Girl!, if you don't do your homework? It's a very short article, too: False Dilemma (AKA "False Dichotomy") at False dilemma - Wikipedia .Rather than explain you to yet again the fact that your "Two Model Approach" (TMA) is a False Dichotomy and the problems that it thus inherits, I will direct you to go back are re-read (or finally read for the first time, New Girl!) my explaination of what "creation science" is, especially the part explaining the TMA.This time, I'll employ the TMA's methodology in order to demonstrate what you get when you use a False Dichotomy. I'll give you my two mutually exclusive models of Presidential Assassination (PA). These are the only two possible models; either the first one is true or the second one is, but they both cannot be true and they cannot both be false. Here they are:
Model #1 -- You, Kelly, killed Lincoln.
or
Model #2 -- You, Kelly, killed Kennedy.Now, since I can disprove Model #1, therefore I have proven Model #2. QED.Kelly, you killed Kennedy. Do you accept or deny it? But how can you possibly deny it, when we've proven it? With our TMA.Do you finally see the problem with "Disproving evolution does prove creation, ..."? Like my PA TMA, "creation science's" TMA artificially and falsely restricts itself to two "models" that ignore a vast number of other possible models. Remember, the only way to have a true dichotomy is to include all possible models; then and only then could you possibly find the true one by eliminating all the false ones. Are you beginning to understand that?If you fail to include all possible models, then when you disprove one model that does nothing to prove any of the remaining models. All it does prove is that the disproven model has been disproven and that the others have not yet been disproven. Not yet!But that leads us to the other problem with your TMA: the "models" themselves are fasle and contrived. When you disprove your "evolution model", that is all that you have disproven. Not evolution, which "creation science" never actually addresses, but rather just its "evolution model". Which ironically contains the vast majority of creation models! Remember what H. Morris (to differential him from his son, John Morris, who had succeeded him as ICR President) had written? That their "evolution model" includes most of the world's religions, both ancient and modern.That's something interesting about the TMA. The "creation model" is very vaguely worded and is never presented -- something very vague might get quickly muttered as a token jesture, but the "model" is never presented. Furthermore, Morris, Gish, and any professional creationist who knows what he's doing will never discuss the "creation model" in a public discussion -- oh, they'd discuss it when preaching to the choir (ie, when at a church event), but never before the general public. The only way that the "creation model" would ever appear in a public debate was when their opponent would present it, at which point master debators Gish and Morris would invariably refuse to respond. Oh, and guess what their excuse would be for refusing to discuss the "creation model"? Because that would be introducing religion into a scientific debate/discussion. So much for your claim that it isn't religious. Creationists refuse to present the "creation model", to discuss it, or to defend it.So what is this mysterious "creation model"? From their writings, we have seen what it is; as a public service, here it is from the journal, Creation/Evolution, article, "Yes, Virginia, There is a Creation Model" (Vol 1, No. 1, Summer 1980 -- Yes, Virginia, There is a Creation Model | National Center for Science Education):

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Though creationists carefully avoid stating their model in debates, thereby keeping themselves off the defensive, they have one nonetheless. Here it is in bold outline as extracted from their books and publications.

1. The Creation
   
   1. Accomplished by a supernatural being
      
   2. Everything created from nothing relatively recently.
      
   3. The Earth was perfectly designed for life:
      
      1. Protected by a vapor layer:
         
         1. Uniform warm climate
            
         2. Cosmic radiation could not penetrate
            
         
         
         
         
      2. No wind or rain.
         
      3. The land irrigated by water from underground.
         
      
      
      
      
   4. All kinds created separately:
      
      1. Each kind is unique and fixed.
         
      2. Each kind is genetically highly variable.
         
      
      
      
      
   5. Humans were uniquely created.
      
   6. No decay occurred.
      
   
   
   
   
2. The Fall
   
   1. The Second Law of Thermodynamics invoked:
      
      1. Perfect order began to degenerate.
         
      2. Death, decay, and disorder began.
         
      
      
      
      
   2. People began to populate the Earth.
      
      1. All humans descended from the original couple.
         
      
      
      
      
   3. The vapor barrier enabled great longevity.
      
   
   
   
   
3. The Flood
   
   1. Simultaneous, worldwide cataclysm.
      
   2. All land was covered within 40 days.
      
   3. Flood water had two sources:
      
      1. The vapor barrier.
         
      2. Underground reservoirs.
         
      
      
      
      
   4. The Flood began 1656 years after creation.
      
   5. The Flood formed and deposited the geologic column.
      
   6. The Flood split the land mass into the present continents.
      
   7. The only survivors were aboard one boat:
      
      1. 8 humans.
         
      2. One pair of most kinds of animals.
         
      3. Aboard boat for 371 days.
         
      
      
      ​
   
   
   
   
4. The Post Flood Period
   
   1. Left over flood energy caused the ice ages.
      
   2. Flood survivors repopulated the Earth.
      
   3. All living species are descendants of the survivors:
      
      1. They were modified by horizontal change to fill the Earth.
         
      2. The animals had original genetic variability.
         
      
      
      
      
   4. The vapor barrier was destroyed - longevity decreased.
      
   5. All species degenerate since disorder must increase.
      
   6. Present geological processes are different from those of the Flood.
      
   
   

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Just in case you object that that came from an "evolutionist" source, it was also given, albeit more briefly, in the Arkansas Act 590, the 1980 "balanced treatment" law. In fact, that was part of what identified "creation science" as being badly disguised religion; during the trial, its sister law was being passed in Louisiana, where they removed the definition of "creation science" from their bill. Here it is listed from the decision of the court (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 05 Jan 1982, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education):

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III
If the defendants are correct and the Court is limited to an examination of the language of the Act, the evidence is overwhelming that both the purpose and effect of Act 590 is the advancement of religion in the public schools.

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Section 4 of the Act provides:

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Definitions, as used in this Act:
(a) "Creation-science" means the scientific evidences for creation and inferences from those scientific evidences. Creation-science includes the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate: (1) Sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing; (2) The insufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of all living kinds from a single organism; (3) Changes only within fixed limits of originally created kinds of plants and animals; (4) Separate ancestry for man and apes; (5) Explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophism, including the occurrence of a worldwide flood; and (6) A relatively recent inception of the earth and living kinds.

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(b) "Evolution-science" means the scientific evidences for evolution and inferences from those scientific evidences. Evolution-science includes the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate: (1) Emergence by naturalistic processes of the universe from disordered matter and emergence of life from nonlife; (2) The sufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of present living kinds from simple earlier kinds; (3) Emergence by mutation and natural selection of present living kinds from simple earlier kinds; (4) Emergence of man from a common ancestor with apes; (5) Explanation of the earth's geology and the evolutionary sequence by uniformitarianism; and (6) An inception several billion years ago of the earth and somewhat later of life.

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(c) "Public schools" means public secondary and elementary schools.

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The evidence establishes that the definition of "creation science" contained in 4(a) has as its unmentioned reference the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis. Among the many creation epics in human history, the account of sudden creation from nothing, or creatio ex nihilo, and subsequent destruction of the world by flood is unique to Genesis. The concepts of 4(a) are the literal Fundamentalists' view of Genesis. Section 4(a) is unquestionably a statement of religion, with the exception of 4(a)(2) which is a negative thrust aimed at what the creationists understand to be the theory of evolution (17).

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Both the concepts and wording of Section 4(a) convey an inescapable religiosity. Section 4(a)(1) describes "sudden creation of the universe, energy and life from nothing." Every theologian who testified, including defense witnesses, expressed the opinion that the statement referred to a supernatural creation which was performed by God.

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Defendants argue that : (1) the fact that 4(a) conveys idea similar to the literal interpretation of Genesis does not make it conclusively a statement of religion; (2) that reference to a creation from nothing is not necessarily a religious concept since the Act only suggests a creator who has power, intelligence and a sense of design and not necessarily the attributes of love, compassion and justice (18); and (3) that simply teaching about the concept of a creator is not a religious exercise unless the student is required to make a commitment to the concept of a creator.

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The evidence fully answers these arguments. The idea of 4(a)(1) are not merely similar to the literal interpretation of Genesis; they are identical and parallel to no other story of creation (19).

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Similarly, ICR lawyer Wendell Bird published an article in an ICR newsletter (Acts & Facts, December 1978) in which he listed tenets of the "Scientific Creation Model" and the "Biblical Creation Model" side-by-side in order to demonstrate how utterly different they are and that there's nothing religious at all about the "scientific" model. Instead, he demonstrated that they are virtually identical to each other, except for some very superficial rewording for legalistic trickery^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpurposes.All of that, plus their overwhelming emphasis on young-earth and flood-geology claims, demonstrate that that "vague" "creation model" is actually very narrowly and rather exactly defined. So narrowly defined, that it excludes the vast majority of creation models, including most of the Judeo-Christian ones, though they don't appear to be too explicit in dumping the latter into the "evolution model". Yep, the "evolution model" is a mess! All ideas that don't fit into the "creation model" get dumped into it, including all the old, out-dated early misconceptions which have long been disproven -- real handy, because they can then use scientists pointing out that an old idea was wrong as evidence against evolution.Which raises a problem with their trying to disprove their "evolution model". Because along all that garbage, they also throw in the truth! Or at least they could have. How can we tell? Sure, you could grab a few pieces of rubbish in the "evolution model" and show them to be false, but then you're back to the old problem of that saying nothing about the rest. There's a plethora of different models in that "evolution model". The only way to disprove them all is just that, to go through and disprove each and every one of them. How else could you possibly prove the "creation model" by disproving all the alternatives if you refuse to disprove all the alternatives?Don't look at me like that, New Girl!. You asked for the job. We just want to make sure you do it right.BTW, completely disproving the "evolution model" is not just a monumental job (boy, is that an understatement!). It is absolutely impossible. Remember how your beloved H. Morris dumped into it "most of the world's religions, both ancient and modern"? Yeah, that's right, "creation science" teaches that the vast majority of supernatural creation stories are part of the "evolution model". How do you disprove a supernatural claim? You can't do it; it's impossible. Since most of the "evolution model" consists of such supernatural claims, you cannot possibly disprove it.So since it's so impossible to prove the "creation model" solely by disproving the "evolution model", why don't you just present the "creation model" and your evidence FOR it? That would be so much easier and more constructive, right? So why don't you?

IOW, if Kelly really wants to show us that "creation science" really is science, then she must actually show us that "creation science" really does science. Otherwise, she'll just waste an entire 300-message topic. No, wait, she just did that.Yet again, I do not doubt her sincerity, but rather I attribute it to her only having only been fed "creation science" nonsense. All she knows is what Morris had written.

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So, Kelly, why haven't you presented any evidence for your "creation model"? Or even presented the details of that "creation model"? I attribute it to the fact that there are no such details nor evidence.To extend what Tag was describing, you need to demonstrate that your "creation model" really is a scientific model. A scientific model is built to describe something. Please note that a scientific model is built. Model-building involves that process of hypothesis formation, testing, and refinement that you should have learned in science class. You observe something, form a hypothesis to attempt to explain it, test that hypothesis and see where and how it fails, then correct or replace the hypothesis and repeat the process. It is an iterative process.There are two products of this model-building process: a detailed description and evidence. Since the goal is to explain a phenomenon or process and describe how it works, then naturally the building of the model will produce a detailed description. If there is no detailed description, then that indicates that no model had ever been built. And all the data gathered during observation and testing creates a body of evidence for the model. If there is no evidence, then that indicates that none of that data had been gathered and furthermore that no observation nor testing had taken place.We have yet to see any creationist present a detailed description of their "creation model", nor any evidence for it. What does that say about the "creation model" and creationist claims that it is a scientific model?As we've already demonstrated to you with ample evidence, the "creation model" is nothing but a superficial rewording of a narrow sectarian interpretation of Genesis, reworded in order to sneak it past the courts into the public schools. I gave you a link to Judge Overton's decision in the Arkansas "balanced-treatment" case. Section II describes the history of the bill and the actions of the local religious community in getting it introduced and passed, including how the professional creationists counselled the locals on how to hide the religious purpose of the law and pretend that it was scientific.Here from a creationist source, Henry Morris' own Institute for Creation Research (ICR), is a table that they published for the purpose of showing that the "Scientific Creation Model" is totally different from the "Biblical Creation Model". Instead, their lawyer, Wendell Bird, only succeeded in demonstrating that they are identical and that the "scientific" "model" was taken from the biblical one (my apologies for blank space being caused by the table HTML; I do not know how to eliminate it):

THE TWO CREATION MODELS OF WENDELL R. BIRDAs Taken From the December 1978 Issue of Acts & Facts
	Scientific Creation Model:	Biblical Creation Model:
I.	Special creation of the universe and earth (by a Creator), on the basis of scientific evidence.	Divine creation of the heaven, stars, and earth by God, on the basis of Genesis.
II.	Application of the entropy law to produce deterioration in the earth and life, on the basis of scientific evidence.	Application of the curse, pronounced by God after Adam's fall, to produce deterioration in the earth and life, on the basis of Genesis.
III.	Special creation of life (by a Creator), on the basis of scientific evidence.	Divine creation of plant and animal life, Adam the first man, and Eve from Adam's side by God, on the basis of Genesis.
IV.	Fixity of original plant and animal kinds, on the basis of scientific evidence.	Fixity of original plant and animal kinds, determined by God, on the basis of Genesis.
V.	Distinct ancestry of man and apes, on the basis of scientific evidence.	Distinct ancestry of Adam and apes, on the basis of Genesis.
VI.	Explanation of much of the earth's geology by a worldwide deluge, on the basis of scientific evidence.	Explanation of the earth's geology by a world-wide flood in which only Noah, his family, and animal pairs were preserved in an ark, on the basis of Genesis.
VII.	Relatively recent origin of the earth and living kinds (in comparison with several billion years), on the basis of scientific evidence.	Approximately six thousand year time span since creation of the earth, life, and Adam, on the basis of Genesis.

Kelly, if you do go back to a creationist forum, I would like to suggest an interesting exercise. Well, more than an exercise. Ask your fellow creationists to do what we have repeatedly asked you to do, to present the "scientific creation model" and the evidence for it. Keep pushing for it (that's what will make it more than an exercise, the persistence). See what you get.In the meantime, you need to test everything. The Talk.Origins Archive at TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy is a good source of information. Wikipedia too, as a starting point.Also, there's a site in Canada whose goal was to promote religious tolerance. On one page, they describe their effort to communicate with creationists about an obviously incorrect claim. Back in the late 1970's, a creationist, most likely Walter Brown, heard about leap seconds, which are added about every 18 months to correct accumulating errors in the clock from the slowing of the earth's rotation. Because Brown misunderstood what leap seconds did, he created his claim that that rate of slowing was by one second every 18 months, which in reality is several thousands of times too rapid -- the US Naval Observatory and an observatory in Paris, who jointly maintain our time standards, also directly measure the rate of the earth's rotation and its slowing. Brown's claim was refuted in the early 1980's and yet creationists continue to use that demonstrably false claim to the present day, though I do not see any evidence that Brown continues using it, even though he continues to use his false and refuted rattlesnake-protein claim.On that page, "A FAILED ATTEMPT TO DIALOG WITH "YOUNG EARTH" CREATION SCIENTISTS" at Unsuccessful dialog with young-earth creationists about an error, they tell of having contacted the web masters of fifteen creationist web sites that carried that claim. They had hoped that once the creationists saw that the claim was wrong, they would do the honest thing and remove it. None of the sites did the honest thing. The conclusion:

quote:

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The author honestly expected that some level of sincere dialog would occur. He hoped that this project would be successful, and that a number of webmasters would delete their earth-slowing "proof" from their web sites. If that had happened, then his intention was to attempt continue the process by trying to convince creation science webmasters to remove other false "proofs" of a young earth. Among the most popular are indicators based on:

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- The decay of the Earth's magnetic field.
- The recession of the Moon from the Earth.
- The age of trees.
- Population growth.
- The temperature of the earth's core.
- The second law of thermodynamics.

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The experiment has convinced the author that meaningful dialog is probably impossible. Supporters of creation science -- at least the 15 contacted -- seem to be totally resistant to change. Attempts to correct these websites are probably not worth pursuing.

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Edited by dwise1, : probably a failed attempt to remove that empty space before the tableEdited by Admin, : Remove extraneous white space before table.

Sorry, Kelly, but you have amply demonstrated over and over again that you do not know what "creation science" is.Sorry, Kelly, but that book you love so much (Morris' and Parker's book) is scientific crap and as theology it's not much better. So are the rest of the ICR's books. We know that because we've read them.I suggested that exercise on a creationist forum because somebody there might be able to point you to the answers that you have been consistently unable to produce: a detailed scientific description of your "creation model" and any evidence for that model. You see, I would allow for there actually being some honest scientists who are creationists and who have been trying to do a real scientific study of creation. IOW, it is possible that there could be an actually scientific form of creationism out there. We can't find it. You most certainly have not found it. Maybe somebody else has. If you refuse to try to find it, then how are you ever going to?If you were to go back over this topic, you would find that most of those messages that were "jumping all over this thread" were repeating the same request, that you demonstrate that "creation science" really is scientific, that you produce the description of "creation model" and evidence for it. You have persistently avoided doing that, so we have had to continue to repeat those extremely reasonable and pertinent questions. If you had bothered to try to answer those questions, then that "jumping" would not have happened. Now, true, you had no real answers, but shouldn't you have at least admitted it?