Theological FAQ:

Doesn't a massive amount of creation science research support a literal reading of Genesis 1?

It tries to. Some of it succeeds. But I think its greatest weakness is that it ignores the readings of Genesis 1 that make the most literary and theological sense.

There are many "creation research" organizations, with many different methodologies, so the following evaluation of their methodology may not apply to every organization out there. But it tries to describe a trend I have seen repeatedly in the reasoning of these organizations. When I examine these sites and read their scholarly articles, I notice a widespread pattern:

  1. Creationists appeal to science in order to test the hypothesis that texts like Gen. 1-11 are scientifically and historically accurate in what basically amounts to the modern senses of these terms.
  2. They use science in order to defend or confirm that hypothesis, i.e. to establish that these texts are in fact scientifically and historically accurate.
  3. Any disconfirming evidence (such as, famously, carbon dating) tends to be subjected to massive criticism and reinterpreted in terms of #1, in the confidence that #1 is true and that evidence properly interpreted will eventually confirm it.

Now #1 and #2 constitute a scientifically valid method. But tests can do no more than yield "true" or "false" answers to the hypothesis that Gen. 1-11 is scientifically and historically accurate. Methodologically, they are unable to arrive at a different (literary, mythological, etc.) reading of Gen. 1-11.

Thus creation scientists and biblical scholars endlessly talk past each other. Creation scientists proceed to treat the question of Gen. 1-11's literary genre as a true-or-false question of scientific accuracy, while biblical scholars proceed to treat the question of its literary genre(s) as a more open-ended question that might yield other answers. The idea that the genres of biblical materials do not line up with the intellectual expectations of modern Europeans (imagine that!) is something that creation science is simply not able to consider, because its whole method is built to test (and often built upon) that very assumption.

As for #3, that is both bad science and irresponsible biblical scholarship. Institutes of creation research that have statements of faith (or shared assumptions) that the Bible is scientifically accurate are generally not in fact considering #1 as a scientific hypothesis that can be disproven, but as an article of faith that is practically nonfalsifiable. These organizations exist not to test #1 as a hypothesis, but to support it as a conviction. In other words, #3 is not science because it does not respect the scientific method. It is apologetics: the defending of a particular view against attacks from within and without. And apologetics is an appropriate activity — but only as long as what it is defending is actually true!

By analogy, think of a department of physics that had a statement of faith that the theory of relativity must be true. How would that department methodologically be able to disprove that theory? Would you really trust its confirmations of relativity as being intellectually honest? Would its commitment finally be to the scientific method, or to its own prior worldview?

None of this should be taken as a rejection of the truthfulness or trustworthiness (or inerrancy or infallibility!) of the creation story -- unless these are reduced to the standards of modern science and historiography. I for one think truth is a lot more than (while sometimes inclusive of) what the Enlightenment thought. But that is a matter for another FAQ.

Grace and peace, Telford