A Hike in the Jungle
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Current Step: The Many Faces of Creationism
   
 

As we have already observed, the "theory" of creationism comes in many forms:

Typical Creationism Claims

Critique

H2: God made organisms that are perfectly adapted to their environments

Makes predictions that do not correspond with what we observe (via contemporary science).

H3: God made organisms to look exactly as they would if they had evolved by the process of natural selection.

Makes the same predictions as evolutionary theory makes—so our observations do not enable us to discriminate between evolutionary theory and this “mimicking” version of creationism.

H4: God had some kind of unspecified impact on the characteristics of living things

An apparently untestable hypothesis—no way to verify or falsify its truth.

From this high viewpoint on our hike, we discern that philosophers of science have not found a version of creationism that:

  1. Makes definite predictions about what we observe, and

  2. Is better supported by observations than evolutionary theory.

So, our conclusion must be... 

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No version of creationism today has the stature of a scientific theory.

More nearly, creationism relates to modern biology, geology, and anthropology in a similar way as alchemy relates to chemistry, or astrology to astronomy.