Creation Bits

With permission, I am reposting this post from CharlesWayneCT on FreeRepublic.com. He does not believe in creation, but I think the way he frames the debate is very interesting and worthy of consideration:

You are correct in that science cannot abide such a lame explanation as "God just made it that way".

But if he DID just make it that way, it wouldn't really matter that it isn't a satisfying scientific explanation.

Creation is by its very nature an extra-scientific event. But it doesn't claim to be anything else. Evolution on the other hand makes the scientific claim, and therefore must be measured on that basis.

There are those who argue for "scientific creationism", but they don't mean that the act of creation is scientific (which really confuses the issue). They mean that the evidence of history which is discovered through observation is not inconsistant with whatever view of creation they are peddling.

But the detective work of divining history through observation is not the same "science" as the "scientific theory" of evolution. Which in fact is a theory with widespread evidence,observable and repeatable. It's just that the "scientific theory of evolution" describes a natural process, not an historical event. Historical events are not scientific theories.

If we could distinguish between history and science, and teach stuff in the proper context, I imagine most "creationists" would crawl back into their spiritual worlds and leave the rest of you alone. They have a point -- no matter how well you can 'explain' observations by the evolutionary model, and no matter if you can find fossils which fit a historical hypothesis that is consistant with an evolutionary model, you simply cannot prove the manner in which we reached our current state of affairs.

Part of the problem is that those who wanted to be free from religion co-opted the science of evolution to use it as a hammer to smash the pillars of religion. The "God is Dead" crowd made a religion out of the science of Evolution, and it was inevitable that those who held to other doctrine would fight back. Science simply was caught in the crossfire.