[WikiEN-l] Creationism is not horse-shit, it's pseudo-science

[Skyring]

On 7/1/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Jtkiefer:
> 
> >    Creationism is a prickly problem, wikipedia can't really take either
> > side due to the fact that no matter what you write on it it's almost
> > impossible to avoid POV pushing.
> 
> Stating that creationism is pseudoscience is not POV-pushing. Maybe
> Intelligent Design, which is a bit more controversial -- but creationism
> as in "God created the World", where it makes "scientific" claims, is
> pretty much universally regarded as pseudoscience by people from
> existing scientific disciplines.

Nobody is attempting to denigrate personal belief or faith by
labelling Creationism as psuedoscience. It's just that Creationism is
not science.

Saying that it's psuedoscience because scientists say so doesn't do
much to help. Perhaps if we say that scientists test and confirm
theories by experiment and change what they believe to be true going
by the results, but adherents of psuedoscience make no such changes -
they reject or ignore evidence contrary to their existing beliefs, and
it is the *appearance* rather than the reality of scientific method
which is important to them.

Creationism (and other psuedosciences) may well contain many beliefs
that are true and accurate and testable. For example, a Creationist
might point out in all sincerity that the first Neanderthal remains
were discovered to be merely those of an old man with arthritis. True
enough, but the old man was a Neanderthal old man. If only one side of
the story is being told, it is NOT science.

-- 
Peter in Canberra