CREATION BIOLOGY

'Creation biology' approaches biology from a creationist perspective which assumes that God created all life on the planet as described in the Genesis account of Creation, in a finite number of discrete created kinds or baramins.
Many creationists see the scientific paradigm of biology as untenable and inconsistent with their worldview. Creationists who use creation biology as a support for their claims assert that, while these forms of life were given by God the ability to vary, and even undergo speciation, the kinds can only appear by the action of the divine, cannot interbreed, and cannot increase in genetic complexity. Creation biology therefore differs from scientific biology in its rejection of the modern synthesis and universal common descent. Since creation biology is concerned almost exclusively with the ''origins'' of living things, its advocates actually accept most of biology regarding physiology, cell structure, the genomic basis of life, microevolution, and speciation.
According to its proponents, creation biology is a synthesis of science and religion that draws from both sources in developing its ideas. However, the scientific community considers it, as part of creation science, to be not legitimate science but pseudoscience or disguised religion (see Creation-evolution controversy).

Contents

Elements of Creation Biology

Criticism

See also

Footnotes

External links

Sources

Elements of Creation Biology

Creationist organizations advocate a wide spectrum of differing ideas which include Young Earth creationism and Intelligent design. They have proposed a number of ideas, which differ significantly from mainstream biology.

★ Biogenesis is the rejection of abiogenesis and other naturalistic speculations regarding the origin of life. Creationists argue that no comprehensive explanation has emerged for life arising spontaneously from non-life, that life has never been observed arising spontaneously from non-life, and that life was designed by a supernatural intelligent being.

★ Teleology, that is, the idea that the universe in general and life in particular has been designed for a purpose.

★ Created kinds, or Baraminology, is the idea that life was originally created in a finite number of discrete "kinds" or "baramins" in a creationist orchard, and that while these kinds have the ability to vary significantly within their kind, one kind cannot interbreed with or transform into another kind, and new kinds cannot arise spontaneously.

★ Irreducible complexity is the claim made by Michael Behe, a biochemist, and professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, that certain systems in life could not have formed through gradual change. Advocates of irreducible complexity assert that several biological structures are composed of interdependent components where the absence of one would cause the entire system to fail, and claim that it is therefore more reasonable to believe they were designed and assembled together for a purpose.

★ Specified complexity is the claim made by William Dembski, a mathematician and senior fellow of the Center for Science and Culture, that genetic information is "complex specified information" (CSI), that natural processes can reduce and change CSI, but can never increase it. Leading proponents of the idea to believe that it is therefore reasonable to infer that such information was created through the intervention of an intelligent designer rather than being the sole product of evolutionary processes.

Criticism

Creation biology often faces fierce resistance from established biologists and their supporters, who regard it as pseudoscience, and religion disguised as science. For example,

★ The law of biogenesis is rejected as being a false absolute. Since life itself is poorly defined, there is no acceptable scientific consensus on how it must "always" come about. In a real sense, there is always integration of "non-living" substances into living beings; this occurrence does not require "agency" of life, since much of the integration occurs by the laws of chemistry which are completely independent from the definition of life.

★ Creation biology presents a teleological view of biology no empirical result could disprove: a violation of the falsifiability requirement of the scientific method.

★ The introduction of supernatural elements in describing the origin and development of life is regarded to be incompatible with the scientific method, the explicit purpose of which is to investigate the empirical realm of nature.

★ The definitions of "kind" or "baramin" as advanced by creationists are regarded as either ''too vague'' or needlessly divergent from the well-explained evolutionary models of phylogenetics. The reluctance of creationists to come up with a suitable system of "kinds" also raises doubts about the falsifiability of the concept.

★ The description of macroevolution as an iterated process of microevolutionary steps is too casually rejected, often by ignoring the plethora of citations regarding microevolutionary pathways to arrive at particular macroevolutionary transitions.

★ The concept of "irreducible complexity" is rejected as an argument from ignorance or a non sequitur of the form "There is no obvious predecessor state; thus, there are no predecessor states." Evolutionary biologists insist they consider the possibility of non-obvious predecessor and intermediate states in evolution; for example, if neither the genetic features "A" nor "B" can exist alone, and "AB" is found in an organism, there are many other imaginable intermediate states, namely "C" to "AC" to "ABC" to "AB", where "C" is a feature that behaves somewhat like "B" but has the ability to stand on its own, as well as some evolutionary merit.

★ "Specified complexity" is rejected as an argument from ignorance. Critics say that specified complexity takes something that evolutionary biologists do not have a complete step-by-step explanation for, and attempts to calculate a probability of that structure evolving naturally. Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology explains "We cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about. We don't have the information to make the calculation."^[1]

See also

★ Baraminology

★ Frank Lewis Marsh

★ Neo-Creationism

★ Pre-Adamite

Footnotes

1. The Evolution Wars C Wallis

External links

★ Creation on the Web/Creation Ministries International

★ Creationscience.com An on-line book, "In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood"

★ Answers in Genesis

★ Dogs breeding dogs? "Upholding the Authority of the Bible from the very first verse."

★ Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution/Intelligent Design Controversy

★ True.Origin Archive - A creationist response to Talk.Origins

Sources

Sarfati, Jonathan. ''Refuting Compromise'', Master Books, 2004.