What is "creation science"

n. The creation story found in Genesis in the Bible or the Quran, presented by fundamentalist Christians and Muslims as literal scientific truth.

n. an effort to give scientific support for the truth of the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis

Creation science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the creation myth in the Book of Genesis and disprove or reinterpret the scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about geology, cosmology, biological evolution, archeology, history, and linguistics.

The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that creation science is a religious, not a scientific view. It fails to qualify as a science because it lacks empirical support, supplies no tentative hypotheses, and resolves to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes. Creation science is a pseudoscientific attempt to map the Bible into scientific facts, and is viewed by professional scientists as unscholarly and, even, as a dishonest and misguided sham, with extremely harmful educational consequences.

Creation science began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and nullify the scientific evidence for evolution. It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide. The main ideas in creation science are: the belief in "creation ex nihilo" (Latin: out of nothing); the conviction that the Earth was created within the last 6,000–10,000 years; the belief that mankind and other life on Earth were created as distinct fixed " baraminological" kinds; and the idea that fossils found in geological strata were deposited during a cataclysmic flood which completely covered the entire Earth. As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and astrophysical theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creationists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis. Creation science proponents often refer to the theory of evolution as " Darwinism" or as "Darwinian evolution."

The creation science texts and curricula that first emerged in the 1960s focused upon concepts derived from a literal interpretation of the Bible and were overtly religious in nature, most notably linking Noah's flood in the Biblical Genesis account to the geological and fossil record in a system termed flood geology. These works attracted little notice beyond the schools and congregations of conservative fundamental and Evangelical Christians until the 1970s when its followers challenged the teaching of evolution in the public schools and other venues in the United States, bringing it to the attention of the public-at-large and the scientific community. Many school boards and lawmakers were persuaded to include the teaching of creation science alongside evolution in the science curriculum. Creation science texts and curricula used in churches and Christian schools were revised to eliminate their Biblical and theological references, and less explicitly sectarian versions of creation science education were introduced in public schools in Louisiana, Arkansas, and other regions in the United States.

The 1982 ruling in McLean v. Arkansas found that creation science fails to meet the essential characteristics of science and that its chief intent is to advance a particular religious view. The teaching of creation science in public schools in the United States effectively ended in 1987 following the United States Supreme Court decision in Edwards v. Aguillard. The court affirmed that a statute requiring the teaching of creation science alongside evolution when evolution is taught in Louisiana public schools was unconstitutional because its sole true purpose was to advance a particular religious belief. In response to this ruling, drafts of the creation science school textbook Of Pandas and People were edited to change references of creation to intelligent design before its publication in 1989. The intelligent design movement promoted this version, then teaching intelligent design in public school science classes was found to be unconstitutional in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District federal court case.