Blog

by Charlie Wolcott

One thing that always seems to be brought up in the origins debate is the clash between science and the Bible. Those that support Evolution clearly see a conflict between what they believe and what the Bible says. Those that support Biblical Creation say there is no conflict at all. Then there are those that say there can be a marriage between Evolution and Creation, by re-interpreting Scripture and saying “Evolution is what God used.” How can we sort this out? First we have to clearly point out what science is and what science is not. For anything to be labeled as scientific, it must have three key characteristics: observable, testable, and repeatable. If anything does not have these three characteristics, it cannot be classified as scientific.

In the recent debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye, Ken repeatedly made a distinction between “observational science” and “historical science.” Bill did not get the concept. He thought all science was science. Ken did give a few examples of the distinction between the two, but allow me to dig a little deeper. Observational science is just like the regular science we see today and carry out in labs in all fields. Historical science cannot do this because we were not there to observe it. But historical science does have means of testability and repeatability. How so? Forensic crews do this all the time, as do the Mythbusters. For historical science to work, you need three things: a starting point, an account of the event, and ending point. Using observational science, if you are missing one, you can logically deduce a possible option for the third. The Mythbusters are blessed by getting all three. They know the conditions before the myth took place, they have the account of the myth, and they have the conditions after the myth took place. Forensics usually have the starting point and ending point and they use observational science to make a logical suggestions of how it got from A to B. But to be clear, this can only demonstrate the possibility of said event taking place. It does not prove it actually happened. To do that, you need a historical account of the event to confirm it did happen.

Evolutionary theorists has problems here, because they have neither the starting point nor the historical account. They only have an ending point. They have to assume a starting point or they have to assume an account in order to deduce the other. And they often go back and forth between them. They have to assume no special creation and that the universe could only come about by natural means in order to suggest the account of the Big Bang, the formation of the earth, the origins of life, and the biodiversity of it. But then they have to assume the Evolutionary account to deduce how the Big Bang got started and how it originated. All this cannot be considered scientific, even from a historical context. In math, in order to solve an equation with two variables, you need two equations. Evolution has two variables, but only one equation.

What about the Biblical account? The Bible has the most important part of historical science: the historical account. Biblical creation does not have a starting point and the closest we have is from what the historical account gives us. And like Evolution, we have the ending point. The ending point is what we see and observe today. Now because the Bible has the historical account, we can use observational science, in the same way the Mythbusters do. We can take the account, and test to see if the results of said account would give us what we expect to see. Let’s take a look at some examples.

The Bible says God created living creatures after their kinds. In fact, it uses this phrase “after its/their kind” 9 times in Genesis 1. We expect to see that dogs will give birth to dogs. And this is exactly what we see. We do not see anything to the contrary. The Bible says due to the curse that man will return to the dust of the earth. When we die, we return to dust. That is basic stuff. Now let’s get to some big events: Noah’s Flood. The Bible talks about rain for 40 days and nights, fountains of the deep bursting forth, waters covering the mountains, and being still for 150 days. Then it talks about the receding of waters, and then the dispersion from the Ark. We only have the Bible giving a formal documentation of such an event, but if the events are true, we should be able to predict how things should look today. Let’s address a few.

The Flood account gives record of only 8 people on the planet surviving. Based on observations of human population models, starting with 8 people 4400 years ago, we mathematically expect to have a population of around 8 billion people by the year 2000. We had just over 6 billion then. Factor in famine, war, disease, etc, and we actually have a very close estimation. Evolution does not have a mechanism for a bottleneck to reflect this observation at that time frame. Here science confirms what the Bible says.

What about the earth itself? In studying what has happened with major flooding events, we have historical records of vast amounts of water doing overnight what many years of little amounts of water were not able to do at all. At Mount St. Helens, we have a new canyon, carved literally overnight when an earthen dam burst. Evolution predicts the Grand Canyon and many others were carved slowly over millions of years by a little water. Yet, we have scientific evidence and historical accounts that demonstrate what would happen with a mega flood. Canyons like the Grand Canyon are found all over the world. What could do this worldwide? The Biblical account has a mechanism that can account for this. Evolution does not.

The list goes on and on. But what we see here is that science cannot prove the Bible is true, because the Bible is outside the scope of what science can address. But where the Bible speaks about events that happen in the natural, the science has always demonstrated it to be true. Yet, despite the numerous claims otherwise, Evolution cannot say this. Evolution’s accounts actually must go AGAINST what the science has been saying. I don’t have space to go into detail on that here. So to answer the question: are science and the Bible in conflict? The answer is an emphatic no. In fact, the two go hand-in-hand extremely well. Just pay attention to what is actually scientific and what actually just myths.