The gap between the Creationist and the Scientist

The 'Daily Duck' blog just made my day.

Money quote: "Fundamentalists are allergic to rational inquiry and freedom of conscience. No amount of evidence, no matter how detailed, will convince them otherwise."

He details the rigid differences between science and creationism, and in a relatively sober analysis gives us good reason to think these Flat Earthers are never going to go away. Too much is at stake in their world view for them to give up now.

My favourite part is a bit extended, but it hits correctly on the two-pronged strategy that Creationists are attempting;

1. Science is just another form of religion, and thus undeserving of being priviledged over Chrstian religious thinking in schools, etc., and

2. The religious ideas in Creationism and ID are in some way 'scientific'.

Both claims are false prima facie.

1. Science is not religion precisely because it is rooted in an operationally athiestic materialism necessary to produce results. If scientists worried about whether their experiments with electricity were being influenced more by 'Thor' or by 'Zeus' and set themselves to determine which particular Lightning God was the bigger influence, nobody would ever build a working generator. Unlike religion, science can make claims about the world and how it works, because it is willing to test those claims against the evidence the world returns and to recant or modify theories when they are demonstrated to be wrong.

2. ID and Creationism are not scientific. They make no claims about the world that are testable or verifiable - and exist purely as a theological discussion. No matter how hard it tries to cloak itself in scientific legitimacy, Creationism is doomed to fail the basic standard of what science is.

Pointing out that Creationists operate soley at right angles to natural empiricism is not going to stop them though. They have something they feel more powerfully than anything like the 'truth'.

They have 'faith', and it sustains them.