quote:
There is no way that Creationism can be tested at all.
Actually, creationist, specifically, the young-earth creationism promoted by most Biblical literalists in the U.S.
can be tested. One makes predictions based on the theory, and then sees whether the predicted phenomena are observed. Let's give it a try, shall we?
(1) If the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and if radiometric dating gives consistent dates, then all reliable radiometric dates should be less than 10,000 years old.
In actuality, radiometric dating
does give consistent dates; however, the dating consistently shows a long, four billion year history as described by conventional geology.
(2) If the universe is less than 10,000 years old, we should only be able to see stars that are less than 10,000 light years away. Furthermore, as time passes, more stars should become visible as enough time has passed for the light to reach us from those stars.
Again, in real life we see stars and galaxies out to billions of light years away.
(3) If all species were specially created, then in so far as there are similar characteristics among different species, these similarities should be mixed among the species in such a way that it should be possible to produce significantly different nested heirarchical patterns.
In reality, the different characteristics that serve to identify different species are not distributed randomly; essentially the same nested heirarchy is produced no matter who does the classification and the methods that person chooses.
(4) If the earth is only 10,000 years old, then the geologic column should consist of granitic or basaltic bedrock overlain by sediments that can be accounted for by known depositional methods operating over 10,000 years, perhaps including the originally created topsoil.
In fact, in most places the geologic column contains deep, deep layers of lithified sediments that have resulted from ancient, and now non-existent, rivers, seas, deserts. Furthermore, these layers show chemical and structural changes that are known to take place only over very long time periods under conditions of very high heat and pressure.
So creationism doesn't pass the obvious tests that can be applied. Of course, the creationists try to explain these away; nothing wrong with that in itself -- one always tries to understand why a theory does not match the observations before one throws out the theory. However, the creationist explanations either cannot be tested themselves, or, when they can be tested, themselves predict phenomena that are not observed.
That is why the first geologists, working under the creationist paradigm, had to eventually abandon creationism and adopt geologic theories that involved known processes operating over long periods of time.
"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
--
Ernie Cline
™ Version 4.2