Science, the Bible, and Worldviews in the Creation Museum

The Creation Museum's reasoning presents some complex problems.

Briefly: the Creation Museum's main display tour side-steps the traditional evolution/creation battleground of "who has superior evidence," essentially redefining both creationism and evolutionary theory as worldviews that frame particular interpretations of more or less neutral scientific data. A creationist scientist examines the fossils of a dinosaur and, due to her presuppositions, arrives at one conclusion. The evolutionary scientist examines the same fossils and arrives at a different conclusion--again based on her own presuppositions.

I must repeat here that I do not endorse the Museum's redefinition. As most scientists would point out, the second scientist in the example above arrives at whatever conclusion she does (e.g., the bones are of an animal that lived 100 million years ago and not 4,000 years ago) based not on pure presuppositional faith but on particular methods and knowledges that have themselves been developed, substantiated, and refined by many people over time. She could, if necessary, give a detailed account of how and why she arrived at the conclusions she did. Moreover, she would be open to the possibility that her conclusions might themselves be flawed; if she were presented with superior methods or supporting theories, she would revise her conclusions accordingly (assuming she's an ethical scientist).

This would, crucially, even be the case were tests by her and by other scientists to prove conclusively that the bones came from an animal that died only 100 years ago. To be sure, such a conclusion would be shocking and would challenge many long-held theories of dinosaurs. But, so long as the data were multiply, reliably, and repeatedly substantiated, the shocking conclusion would eventually be accepted. Scientific conclusions change in response to data.

The creationist scientist (following the model of creation science proposed by the Museum), on the other hand, explicitly begins her study of the bones by knowing the conclusion ahead of time. The bones cannot be more than X thousands of years old because the Bible (which is utterly without error), when read literally, suggests that existence itself is no older than 6,000-10,000 years. Any evidence or method that points to the contrary is cause not to doubt the conclusion but to doubt the evidence or method. Creationism, seen in this light, fails the disciplinary test of science not because it isn't detailed or careful or thoughtful (in its own way, it is all of these things) but because it does not arrive at conclusions based on data but expects data to line themselves up behind already-certain conclusions.

The Creation Museum passes over these key distinctions by rendering both creationists and evolutionists mute in terms of their respective scientific rationales. In place of evidence to arrive at their respective conclusions (suggests the Museum), evolutionists and creationists arrive at conclusions due primarily to their respective worldviews. The creationist starts from the assumption that the Bible is God's Word, utterly and literally accurate in every description of reality. The earth, the universe, and all life therein were created in six literal days. God brought into being distinct animal kinds (which later perhaps split off into species, e.g., canines became wolves, dogs, coyotes, etc.).

And the evolutionist? Now, of course, "evolutionists" would themselves answer the question of starting point in a variety of different ways. Many are Christians themselves, affirming that God is indeed the ultimate force behind all of the extant universe. Such Christian evolutionists might credit God with installing within creation the ability to self-develop, essentially making evolution the motor of life on earth. Or they might say that their starting points as religious believers are necessarily different--grander--than their starting points as scientists. Science, they might argue, isn't a worldview but a methodology brought into play in particular circumstances for particular ends. When doing scientific things, the Christian scientist does her best to bracket biases and preconceptions, focusing on empirically accessible data or experiments as well as the logical/mathematical connections and predictions that flow from those. One does not look to science to determine the existence of God or the soul or human rights because those things aren't amenable to empirical investigation.

In the Creation Museum's portrayal, however, that act of bracketing off unprovable biases--actually the act of considering "a belief in the inerrant Bible" as one of those biases--is itself a worldview-based, worldview-generative gesture. That is, if you believe it possible or wise to so categorize the inerrant-infallible-literally true view of the Bible as a consideration to be excluded from science--you're already playing in a different sandbox from young-earth creationist Christians.

And although I consider the Museum's definition of science to be tendentious, I think they score a point here. If you base your approach to all of reality on the foundation of the Bible as literal/inerrant Truth, then to bracket off or ignore Biblical testimony at any time is to break with that worldview. Worldviews are in this sense similar to Thomas Kuhn's scientific paradigms; they determine not only what counts as a conclusion but what counts as data. A definition of science as little more than careful observation of facts fails in that it assumes a kind of pre-agreement among observers about what a fact is. Part of scientific training--indeed, part of any discipline's training in observation, investigation, and analysis--involves absorbing what counts as significant. An archeologist working in the field knows, for example, what dust or dirt to brush away as unimportant and what bit of grit to value as, say, ash from an ancient cooking fire. An astronomer peering through a telescope knows to separate the dots of light that are celestial bodies from those that are optical illusions, reflections, or scratches on the lens.

Similarly, a creationist begins by assuming that a belief in the Bible as Utter Truth is inseparable from any other data she might consider. An evolutionist assumes the opposite, that such a belief is better separated from the investigation of data, at least initially. Crucially, neither of these assumptions are themselves justifiable or provable by appeal to scientific reason. They are pre-scientific, metaphysical.

And, as long as it has its druthers, the Museum is happier to argue metaphysics than evidence.

More tomorrow,

JF