An overview of Creationism and Evolutionism

This article will focus on the contradiction between creationists and evolutionists (Darwinians) in the United States by highlighting the opinion of the famous Judge Overton.

It started in 1925 in Tennessee, when the monkey trial occurred against John Scope. Scope were accused and proved guilty against Tennessee Law (it is no longer applicable nowadays) which forbade the teaching of the science of evolution. The state of Tennessee was still forbid the teaching of the science of evolution until 1967. Then after, there were interesting phenomena appeared in Politics, Religions, and Education, for example in 1995 and 1996 a new law has been proposed to a legislature by 5 states of United State of America.  This new law required schools to provide balanced teaching between the knowledge of evolution and the science of creationism in education of science. The science of creationism bases its knowledge on the Book of Genesis of the Gospels. According to this book, the earth, the universe and all the living being inside it were created in a sudden. God created earth and gave tasks to humans to guard it, but then humans did not obey and then God created flash floods (The story of the ark of Noah) to the Promise Land Abraham.

Since the end of the Cold War, The Christian fundamentalists had formed a coalition with the right-wing political elements (religious right) to regain their position in US education. However, education and politics had changed; the efforts to forbid the teaching of evolution were no longer possible. The most likely thing was to re-enter the creationism knowledge into the syllabus. However, the creationism is a religious doctrine, to teach about it in the state schools would oppose the first amendment to the US constitution that defines the separation between church and state. In order to introduce the understanding of creationism in schools (in the same class where the understanding of evolution also being teach); the understanding of creationism try to make it as a pure scientific doctrine. Their pretext “The creation model is at least as scientific as the evolution model, and is at least as nonreligious as the evolution model”

The state of Arkansas passed a law that requires an equal accountability between the understanding of creationism and the understanding of evolution. The scientists and church members questioned the constitutionality of the new law in the court. They debated that despite of all of it, the point was the science of creationism was not part of the science but a religion that was the same as science, then what had became the problem  was not about science against religion, or whether the understanding of creationism was right or make sense. But the debate was being focus on the claim whether or not the understanding of creationism was scientific. Therefore, questions arose about what the science was, when could a claim become scientific, how to differentiate between science and pseudo science.

Judge William R Overton, who tried this case, then sought the views of the philosophers. Furthermore, being agree to the argument that scientific theory must own such criteria like: (a) being controlled / accompanied by natural law, (b) must be accessible based on natural law, (c) can be approved empirically, (d) the conclusions are tentative, it means that the theory must be test continually, and (e) Falsifiable

Being controlled by natural law

It means that a statement can be as a science and not just an ordinary statement if: (a) it can be explained in a view of natural law. Natural law is defined as the general relationship between an object and others which explain its behavior, for example physical laws, chemical laws, Newton's laws of  motion, Ohm's law of resistance (resistors), and Hooke's law of elasticity, (b) claims must be made so it can be can be tested, (c) if the tested claim can be disproved (broken) by experience, then this must be considered  as a strong evidence to refuting the theory, questioning the theory mentioned, (d) on the contrary, experience shows that the existence of  theory that has been approved, can be broken by evidence found later. For example, the adherents of creationism think that the earth's surface were formed from disasters, but geology holds that the surface of the earth was formed by the transition of tectonic plates, all aspects are physical phenomena. The tidal is caused by the gravity of the moon. The denial of the creationism adherents’ statement about the floods that created the surface of the earth, what has caused the floods, or where was it come from? Even now when the floods happen, it is only in certain area at certain time, not at the same time all over the world.

Another example, the creationist adherents said that the sun, the earth and life were created simultaneously by God thousand years ago. Then Judge Overton questioned of how to acknowledge it. The creationist adherents then answered that it was impossible to determine everything about creationism, because the process was not creative. If humans want to know (the time of creationism, the duration of creationism, the method of creationism, etc) about all of those things, they are all mentioned in the God’s revelation. God were there when it happened, and we were not, therefore we did not see what God has done. Based on this statement, the scientists then decided that the theory cannot be explained by the natural law, because there will be no scientific investigation that can be done.

Faith can be strong or weak, but it cannot be as a hypothesis. The creationist adherents then said that the evolutionists were also based on faith. Then the evolutionists said that they can prove their theory scientifically, for example the Essay of Stephen Jay Gould “The Panda’s Thumb”. That bear and panda evolve based on their habitat. Panda has extra thumb that is very different from bear and other primate.  This is because Panda has to survive in the wood of Bamboos. In order to be able to hold the bamboo, Panda has to have an extra thumb, meanwhile bear lives in a very different area, omnivore, and consume fish and honey more, so it does not need an extra thumb.

Must be accessible based on natural law,

A claim by the creationists that had been rejected by judge Overton was that each and every living being came from different kind of creatures. The judge and the scientist thought that it was not scientific. The creationists said than humans came from different sources of other primates, but on the other hand they said that all bats were from the same sources, this was very contradictive.

Can be approved empirically

Judge Overton said that scientific theories must be tested and proven wrong (testable and falsifiable). Are these two things different? Karl Popper then answered that a theory can only be tested by proving it wrong. A theory will be pronounced as a scientific one if it has already passed some scientific tests. The creationists denied the Judge Overton's view, by stating that The Darwin's Theory of Evolution did not exist because the discovery of fossils was incomplete. Regarding this, Alexander Bird answered that the incompleteness of this fossil discovery proves that the Darwin's theory is indeed exist.

In conclusion, creationism is not science because it does not fulfill the criteria of science. The understanding of creationism bases its statement on faith, while the understanding of evolutionism bases its statement on evidence. God is not the object of experiment; therefore we cannot conclude a hypothesis on God. The creationist and the evolutionist can walk side by side simultaneously without disturbing each other, because it cannot be contested.