Science
Demarcation
Criterion in the
Battle Against
Creationism
Paul J. Wendel
Kent State University
“Young-earth”
Creationism
“Young-earth”
creationists believe:
that the universe
and all living things
were created in six
24-hour days about
6,000 years ago
“Young-earth”
creationists believe:
that
Darwinian
evolution
never
happened
“Young-earth”
creationists believe:
that a worldwide
flood deposited
most of the geologic
column
From bibleuniverse.co
“Young-earth”
creationism
Young-earth
creationism has
become the dominant
form of creationism in
the United States
(Numbers 1992).
The Creation Museum
The 50,000
square foot
“Creation Museum”
opened in northern
Kentucky in May
2007 at a cost of
$28 million.
From
creationiwiki.org/AiG
The Creation Museum
emphasizes the
young-earth
creationists belief
that dinosaurs and
humans lived
together
AP Photo by Ed Reinke
The Creation Museum
argues that earth
antiquity and
evolution are
incompatible with
Christian belief.
AP Photo by Ed Reink
Intelligent Design
argues that biological
structures such as the
bacterial flagellum, or
biological processes such as
the blood-clotting cascade,
could not have evolved
because removal of one part
disables the whole, i. e. they
are “irreducibly complex.”
Intelligent Design
argues that “irreducibly
complex” structures must
have a Designer.
typically silent on the age
of the earth, Noah’s flood,
dinosaurs, etc.
avoids explicit religious
references.
The Legal
Landscape
Tennessee v.
Scopes (1925)
Tenessee’s Butler
Act (1925) prohibited
all state-supported
schools from teaching
any alternative to the
Biblical creation story,
including evolution.
Tennessee v.
Scopes
(1925)
Teacher John
Scopes intentionally
violated the Butler Law
and was convicted, but
his conviction was
overturned on
procedural grounds.
The Butler Law
remained in force until
1967.
Epperson v.
(1968)
U.Arkansas
S. Supreme Court overturned
Arkansas’s
Rottenberry Act of 1928, which outlawed
teaching human evolution.
The Court ruled that the Rottenberry Act
violated the Establishment Clause of the first
amendment to the U. S. Constitution: “Congress
shall make no law respecting the establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.”
Lead to the overturn or repeal of numerous
McLean v. Arkansas
BOE (1982)
Arkansas Act 590 (1981): The Balanced
Treatment for Creation-Science and EvolutionScience Act.
In an effort to avoid Establishment Clause
conflict, the Arkansas legislature attempted to
present creationism as “science” rather than
religion. However, the religious content of the act
was fairly transparent.
McLean v. Arkansas
•From Act 590:
BOE
(1982)
•“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 the 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
occurrence of a worldwide flood; and (6) A
McLean v. Arkansas
•Judge
Overton(1982)
ruled that Act 590 violated the
BOE
Establishment Clause, in part because “creation
science” cannot be falsified and therefore is not
science: “A scientific theory must be tentative and
always subject to revision or abandonment in light
of facts that are inconsistent with, or falsify, the
theory. A theory that is by its own terms dogmatic,
absolutist and never subject to revision is not a
scientific theory. The creationist’s methods do not
take data, weigh it against the opposing scientific
data, and thereafter reach . . . conclusions . . .
McLean v. Arkansas
BOE (1982)
•Instead, they take the literal wording of the book
of Genesis and attempt to find scientific support for
it . . . [T]hey cannot properly describe the
methodology used as scientific, if they start with a
conclusion and refuse to change it regardless of
the evidence . . .” (McClean v. Arkansas BOE,
1982, pp. 1268-1269).
•
Kitzmiller v. Dover
The Dover, PA school district required that a
(2005)
disclaimer be read in all high school biology
classes. The disclaimer referenced alleged flaws
in evolutionary theory and offered Intelligent
Design as an alternative.
Judge John E. Jones ruled that the disclaimer
violated the Establishment Clause, in part
because Intelligent Design (ID) is not science.
Jones reached this conclusion, in part, by a
testability argument: “irreducible complexity” tests
the theory of evolution, but the hypothesis of a
Designer remains untestable. Therefore ID is not
The U. S.
National
Academy of
Sciences
Science and
Creationism (1999)
Science and
Creationism (1999)
•“Creation science” is disqualified as science on
falsifiability/testability grounds:
•“[T]he claims of creation science do not refer to
natural causes and cannot be subject to
meaningful tests, so they do not qualify as scientific
hypothesis” (p. ix).
Science and
Creationism
(1999)
•“The theory of evolution has become the central
unifying concept of biology and is a critical
component of many related scientific disciplines. In
contrast, the claims of creation science lack
empirical support and cannot be meaningfully
tested. These observations lead to two
fundamental conclusions: the teaching of evolution
should be an integral part of science instruction,
and creation science is in fact not science and
should not be presented as such in science
classes” (pp. 1-2).
Science
and
•“Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims
of supernatural
intervention in the
origin of life or of
Creationism
(1999)
species are not science because they are not
testable by the methods of science. These claims
subordinate observed data to statements based on
authority, revelation, or religious belief.
Documentation offered in support of these claims is
typically limited to the special publications of their
advocates. These publications do not offer
hypotheses subject to change in light of new data,
new interpretations, or demonstrations of error.
This contrasts with science, where any hypothesis
or theory always remains subject to the possibility
Science and
•By Creationism
contrast, evolutionary theory
is testable:
(1999)
•“The fossil record thus provides consistent
evidence of systematic change through time--of
descent with modification. From this huge body of
evidence, it can be predicted that no reversals will
be found in future palentological studies. That is,
amphibians will not appear before fishes, nor
mammals before reptiles, and no complex life will
occur in the geological record before the oldest
eukaryotic cells. This prediction has been upheld
by the evidence that has accumulated until now: no
Science and
Creationism (1999)
•“[Comparative anatomists] provide important
inferences about the details of evolutionary history,
inferences that can be tested by comparisons with
the sequence of ancestral forms in the
paleontological record” (p. 14).
Science and
Creationism (1999)
•“Evolutionary theory explains that biological
diversity results from the descendants of local or
migrant predecessors becoming adapted to their
diverse environments. This explanation can be
tested by examining present species and local
fossils to see whether they have similar structures,
which would indicate how one is derived from the
other. Also, there should be evidence that species
without an established local ancestry had migrated
into the locality” (p. 15).
Problems With the
Falsifiability
Criterion
1. Creationists falsify
hypotheses.
•In the 1970s and 1980s,
creationist Robert Gentry
studied radiohalos--scars in
granitic rocks attributed to
emission of alpha particles
by radioactive nuclei.
1. Creationists falsify
•hypotheses.
Gentry found radiohalos
attributed to Polonium 218
(half life ≈ 3 minutes) in solid
granite with no visible
radiohalos from parent nuclei
(e. g. Radon 222).
•Gentry concluded that the
granite must have been
created in solid form in less
than 3 minutes.
•Therefore granite =
1. Creationists falsify
hypotheses.
•In the 1980s, the Creation
Research Society and the
Institute for Creation
Research examined Gentry’s
data and rejected his
conclusions, attributing
Polonium radiohalos to
nuclear migration.
2. A logical
contradiction.
•One cannot logically argue that a
statement is unfalsifiable and
false. Following the McLean
decision, Larry Laudan (1982)
wrote:
•“[Creationist] claims are testable,
they have been tested, and they
have failed those tests.
Unfortunately, the logic of the
Opinion’s analysis precludes
saying any of the above . . .
2. A logical
contradiction.
•“Asserting that Creationism makes
no empirical claims plays directly, if
inadvertently, into the hands of the
creationists by immunizing their
ideology from empirical
confrontation. The correct way to
combat Creationism is to confute
the empirical claims it does make,
not to pretend that it makes no such
claims at all” (Laudan, 1982/1996,
p. 352).
2. A logical
•contradiction.
In Science and Creationism
(1999), the National Academy
commits the same logical error,
arguing that creationism is
unfalsifiable (previous slides)
while cataloging the physical
evidence falsifying creationist
beliefs such as the young-earth
hypothesis (p. 7), a worldwide
flood (p. 8), and simultaneous
creation of all types of
creatures (pp. 20-21).
Testable vs. Untestable
Features
•Stephen Jay Gould (1984) and Judge Jones (in
Kitzmiller v. Dover, 2005) separate creationism’s
testable claims from its untestable claims.
•E. g. Jones argued that “irreducible complexity”
is testable, but Intelligent Design is not.
•Therefore ID is not science.
Testable vs. Untestable
•Features
Science is also divisible into testable and
untestable features:
•E. g. String Theory lacks empirical tests, yet
most physicists agree that it is science.
•E. g. physicists assume that the principles and
laws of the universe are simple in some
fundamental way, that the same natural laws
apply to all parts of the universe, that the same
natural laws apply through time, etc. These
assumptions are untestable (tests of these
principles would rely on these same
Testable
vs.
Untestable
•Even where testable, science is non-falsifiable:
Features
•Lakatos’ (1970): In a scientific research program,
a “protective belt” surrounds a “hard core” of
scientific tenets.
•Kuhn (1970): “It has often been observed . . . that
Newton’s second law of motion, though it took
centuries of difficult factual and theoretical research
to achieve, behaves for those committed to
Newton’s theory very much like a purely logical
statement that no amount of observation could
refute . . . [S]cientists fail to reject paradigms when
faced with anomalies or counterinstances. They
Additional Demarcation
Criteria
Tentativeness
Robert Merton’s Norms (universalism,
communism, disinterestedness, organized
skepticism)
Additional Demarcation
Criteria
Methodological Naturalism
Cartoon by Sidney Harris
A Wittgensteinian
Alternative to
Demarcation
Concepts do not need
boundaries
Game (PI pp. 32-33)
Exactness (PI p. 42)
Understanding (PI pp. 60-61)
Reading (PI pp. 61-70)
Being guided (PI p. 70)
Carefulness (PI pp. 70-73)
Concepts do not need
•boundaries
“For how is the concept of a game bounded?
What still counts as a game and what no longer
does? Can you give the boundary? No. . . . (But
that never troubled you before when you used the
word ‘game’) . . . We do not know the boundaries
because none have been drawn. To repeat, we
can draw a boundary -- for a special purpose.
Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not
at all!” (PI p. 33).
•The indistinctness or crudeness of a concept can
increase its usefulness for thinking or speaking
Nature of Science
Consensus:
Scientific knowledge while durable, has a
tentative character.
Scientific knowledge relies heavily, but not
entirely, on observation, experimental evidence,
rational arguments, and skepticism.
There is no one way to do science.
The history of science reveals both an
evolutionary and revolutionary character.
(McComas, Almazroa, & Clough, 1
Nature of Science
Consensus:
•No single unitary definition of science applies to
all contexts.
•Many overlapping indicators assist in reaching a
judgement regarding whether or not any particular
practice should be classified as “science.”
Is Creationism Science?
No.
In the absence of a unitary, context-independent
definition of science, this conclusion is a judgement
Consensus
among scientists that creationism is
based
on:
not science
Nearly nonexistent publication record of
creationism in mainstream scientific literature
Creationist abandonment of methodological
naturalism
Untestable/nonfaslifiable/nontentative aspects