On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 05:24:49AM -0400, Leif Knutsen wrote: The argument for (Christian) creationism is "The Bible says so." That is where creationists ground their beliefs -- not in the fossils; not in radiocarbon dating; not in taxonomy; not in molecular biology; but first and foremost in the Bible. Creationism is a profoundly and centrally religious belief; trying to understand it as an attempt at scientific explanation is not going to get you very far. I do not think you will find a creationist who says, "I believe in creationism _because_ the fossil record leaves unanswered questions in the theory of evolution." After all, if someone merely doubted evolution they would have no particular reason to jump on the bandwagon of creationism. They could instead believe in a steady-state Earth (uncreated and eternal), or simply say, "I don't know how the species of Earth came to be." Creationism cannot be understood as simply "doubting evolution", as if there were only two possibilities. Creationism is not simply an absence of belief in evolution; it is, rather, an asserted belief in creation. It is also not a belief rooted in science, in evidence or observation, but rather in faith. It is a fundamentally religious belief; that is, it is directly tied up in the believer's belief in and concept of the divine. For these reasons, I do not think that we can accurately describe creationism itself as "a form of scientific inquiry" of any sort -- neither scientific nor pseudoscientific. The religious beliefs themselves are no more an attempt at science than are religious beliefs in karma, angels, salvation, or miracles. However, it sometimes happens that people who have particular beliefs make up "science-ish" arguments in favor of them. This is not unique to religious beliefs -- political and nationalistic beliefs sometimes attract this very same behavior. This is where pseudoscience comes in. The pseudoscientific arguments conjured up to defend creationism are usually called "creation science" or "intelligent design"; and they are every bit as pseudoscientific as Lysenkoism. -- Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger(a)whoi.edu>

Leif Knutsen wrote: "God created the universe," and "Creationism is a pseudoscience" are both hypotheses, and as such both should be subject to hypothesis testing. For a "sciense" to be a pseudoscience it must fall rigorously within a formal definition of the term. More simply put the fallacy is "If A implies B, then not A implies not B". Possibly. It's a reasonable suggestion, but avoids the problem that people put all manner of material under this heading. A strictly correct article based on the philosophy would satisfy the purists among us, and chase away everybody else on both sides of these arguments. Ec