Why Do Young-Earth Creationists Even Try to Pretend at Science?

There are a few main young-Earth (Christian) creationism organizations in the world that rise to the top in terms of reach and output and attempt to use science to justify their beliefs. Among those I would name three: Answers in Genesis (US-based, headed by Ken Ham), Institute for Creation Research (US-based, founded by Duane Gish), and Australia-based Creation Ministries International (which I think was also founded by Ken Ham, but AiG and CMI severed ties several years ago, fairly acrimoniously).

Over the past eight years, I have dealt with articles by all three, and other. In fact, my early posts mostly consisted of ripping through YEC claims. That’s mostly fallen by the wayside as posts have (regrettably) decreased over the years as I became more and more busy with work, but occasionally I’ll still see something that I want to comment on.

But more on that momentarily.

What these Big Three do, among other things, is attempt to do science and/or report on science. They’ve realized that as each new scientific discovery has borne out that contradicts their sacred tome, more and more people will leave their strict, literal interpretation of their religious writings.

Ergo, they have to try to show that science somehow supports something that they’ve said and believe.

I’ve also done numerous posts on this blog about the scientific process and why – to be a good scientist – you must also be a skeptic: You must find a way to remove your own bias(es) from the experiment. You must be able to objectively look at the data and also try to disprove what you want to think is the case in order to see if the data are ambiguous or really do exclusively support the conclusion. You have to think of all the other interpretations and gather observational evidence that those explanations are not valid. The process is not infallible, but it’s a heck of a lot better than a dogmatic approach.

Which, despite all the façade, is what creation “science” really is. And, surprisingly, I couldn’t’ve said it better myself than what Creation Ministries International wrote a few days ago in trying to answer a reader’s question about when stars were formed:

“what you propose is clearly ‘science’-driven not text-driven”

Blasted “science!” Always interfering with the Bible! (or at least their reading of it)

But, realizing it or not, this clearly demonstrates that what YECs do is not science: They start with their conclusion and will modify or massage or tweak or somehow shove the data into that hole to make it come out right. Or, simply deny that it exists (such as Kent Hovind denying there are reversals in Earth’s magnetic field, or almost all YECs denying accuracy of radiometric dating). This handy flowchart I made several years ago sums it up nicely:

Flow Chart Showing Faith-Based “Science”

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