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Evolution vs. Creation – Science
An Induction Based Analysis
Pradeeban Kathiravelu
kpr@kth.se
Philosophy of Science: 870129-T455
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
October 2014
Abstract — Evolution and Creation Science are two of the
different models explaining the origin of life on Earth. Evolution
is considered the scientific approach explaining the life on the
planet, by the majority of the scientific community. However,
Creation-Science is not a stranger either, with a considerable
number of followers, claiming it a science or not. In this paper,
we will discuss whether the creation-science is a genuine
scientific alternative to evolution. This paper takes an induction
based approach, without making much assumptions on the
validity of evolution or creation-science, in order to reach an
unbiased conclusion, based on the analysis.
Keywords – Creation-Science, Evolution, Induction, Origin, Models
of Origin, Problem of Induction, Game Theory, Evolutionary Game
Theory.
I. INTRODUCTION
There are many models of origin that fail to impress the
scientific community, because of their rigorous theological
tone. As it is impossible to reproduce the origin by simple
testable experiments, many pseudoscientific theories or claims
lacking scientific backing, have also been proposed.
Evolution is a model of origin, which is commonly
accepted as the scientific model. Evolution is the change in
the inherited characteristics in the living beings in the long
term, as an adoption to the natural environmental conditions.
Evolutionists believe that all the living beings evolved from a
single ancestor. Evolution is considered to follow a tree
model, where the current living beings are the leaves in the
tree, still evolving. This tree model shows a timeline, where
parents show the ancestors of the creatures in the
contemporary Earth.
Creation-Science is considered a belief with a religious
background of Christians and Jews, advocating that the God
created Earth and all the life on it – “sudden creation of the
universe, energy, and life from nothing” [1]. Creationists
believe that the creation was a sudden and flat process, where
the God created all the plants and animals, as they are, in just
six days. Creation-Science is often referred to as, “Young
Earth Creationism (YEC)”, as it claims Earth as young as
from 5,700 to 10,000 years old. This is against the widely
accepted scientific age of the life in the planet, which is 3 – 4
billions of years. Creation-science is used as a tool by the
religious community to dismiss the evolutionist thoughts.
Because of the religious nature itself, creation-science is often
disregarded from being considered anything scientific.
In the upcoming sections, we will further analyse the
models of origin with theories, examples, and analogies.
Section II defines the scope of this paper. Section III is the
principal section of the paper, where we discuss the scientific
nature of the models using the multiple inductive approaches.
Section IV analyses the popular court cases regarding
creation-science and its scientific and legal status, based on
the events. There are even more models of origin, apart from
these two. Section V looks at these models and related studies
to these models of origin. Section VI looks at the criticism and
support to creation-science in the popular contemporary
culture. Finally, section VII will drive us to the conclusion of
this paper.
II. SCOPE
Induction is an umbrella term, consists of multiple schools
of thoughts. This paper discusses the evidence and validity of
the two models of origin, under the scope of induction.
Description and Justification are two major concerns of
principles of induction. The problem of justification is the
necessity to show that the inferential methodology is reliable.
The problem of description doesn't require us to show that the
inferential practice is reliable. Rather, it merely requires us to
describe their stance. Description is hard, because we can not
describe everything that we do as a structured principled
description. This paper focuses on the principles of induction,
while quoting the writings of the philosophers such as Popper,
Lakatos, and Reichenbach, during the analysis.
A. WHY INDUCTION?
Induction leads towards a general conclusion or theory,
from the given specific examples or observations. Inductive
reasoning is vital for creativity and immature sciences. Most
of the long term scientific processes are underdetermined. So
is the origin of life. Inductive logic defines the probability of
occurrence based on the available total evidence [2]. As more
evidences are found, the mathematical probability of the
theory becomes higher, which makes the theory qualify as
scientific.
Unlike the deductive arguments which attempts to reach a
logically certain conclusions, inductive reasoning seeks to
supply a strong evidence. How probable is this event to
happen, is the question that induction attempts to answer.
Many of the research papers published by the academics
frequently use inductive logic. Creativity involved in science
is often induction. It lets us derive new theories with a high
probability. As a revolutionary theory, evolution, from the
beginning, involved lots of theories and derivations, inductive
in the nature. Creation-Science and the other alternatives too
follow the same model, due to the inherent
underdetermination involved in the long life of the living
beings in Earth, where we are left with just a few evidences
such as the fossils and also the limited observations in the
natural and controlled test environments. Hence, inductive
reasoning helps the models to derive theories based on the
limited available information.
B. FALSIFIABILITY
Popper takes a strong approach towards defining
demarcation criteria, which is science and which is non-
science or pseudoscience. He advocates against the inductive
logic. “All the swans we have seen so far are white; hence all
the swans are white” is an incorrect use of induction.
Similarly, using “green leaves” as a potential supportive factor
to our theory of white swans is equally bad. We should also
note the popular comment from Popper on Adler's
“thousandfold experience” - “And with this new case, I
suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one fold.
[3].”
Popper elaborates that pseudosciences use induction to
generate and formulate theories, and seek experiments to
support their theories [4]. Popper claims falsifiability as the
only way of differentiating science from pseudoscience [3, 4].
If we take the word of Popper, it should be easy for us to
dismiss creation-science from considered a science, as the
intelligent creator or the God, can not be falsified or hence
creation-science can never be refuted. By the believers, it
should be taken as the unquestionable truth beyond any
doubts.
C. ELIMINATION OF PSYCHOLOGISM
It is not important for us to consider that creation-science is
originally proposed based on the religion, with lack of
scientific background. Popper advocates that the origin of the
theory is irrelevant, where the position of the theory regarding
how the theory explains and predicts the things matters [4].
He claims, the initial stage, the act of conceiving a theory, is
irrelevant to the logical analysis of the scientific knowledge; it
is the concern of empirical psychology. Focussing on “rational
reconstruction” to build the situation that lead the scientist
towards the discovery is pointless, as many of the discoveries
were often the results of accidents or coincidence, than a
preplanned activity.
Evolution doesn't have to be superior to creation-science
for the scientific community, just because it was proposed by
scientists, not the priests. We shall restrict our analysis to how
evolution and creation-science explain the origin. How these
models were created or formulated and who proposed these
models, is not our focus. Also for the research interest, we
shall limit ourself to induction, without paying much attention
to deduction or other approaches.
III. INDUCTION BASED ANALYSIS
As Reichenbach mentions, “The principle of induction is
unreservedly accepted by the whole of science and that no
man can seriously doubt this principle in everyday life either.
[4]” Hence we have to adhere to the inductive reasoning for
the solutions to the complicated problems of big or
complicated scale, which include a long time duration or a
huge space. We deduce the answers for questions such as the
distance of the Sun, the shape of Earth, the origin of life in
Earth, as given the large probability of the correctness of
existing physical, biological, chemical, and astronomical
theories, we can base our explanations on them.
A. INDUCTIVE LOGIC
Lakatos takes a milder approach towards induction and the
the potential demarcation criteria. According to Lakatos,
scientific theories evolve, as heuristics drive them to make
predictions which are supported by the evidence [2].
Considering the length and timeline of evolution (or the
alternative theories), the research on the model of origin is
still a young field. Hence, we must treat these budding
researches leniently.
With time, the evidence for evolution is being found. While
the rate of finding evidence for evolution is relatively slow
compared to other established scientific theories, this can be
reasonable considering the time and space complexity of the
problem. Nevertheless no strong evidence is found against
evolution, making it stronger each day. Creationists could not
provide any scientific evidence to support their claims
inductively.
B. ROLES OF INDUCTION
An inference is called inductive, if that passes from
particular statements to universal statements. A typical
example would be the formation of hypotheses or theories
from the observations of experiments. Popper defines the
Problem of Induction as the question whether inductive
inferences are justified, and under which conditions are they
justified. How many of the singular statements should be
monitored before considering the theory to be formulated or
corroborated? When we take induction should work, as it has
worked previously, throughout the history of science, this is
cyclic, as this is proving induction using inductive logic.
Hence, in the strong sense, induction provides a milder
approach in proving something; it rather provides the
probability of occurrence. Based on the limited observations,
we use induction to prove the validity and the probability of
evolution or creation-science.
Induction plays two main roles, as a logic of discovery and
as a logic of justification. These two roles are well-defined
with different focusses, in theory. However, in practice, the
distinction often gets tougher, as discoveries are ideally well
established, and whatever well-established is justified [5].
Now the question arises. How well evolution and creation-
science score in terms of these roles? We will briefly look at
these two roles of induction on the two models .
1) CREATIVE INFERENCE
Creative inference is a logic of discovery, that formulates
new theories, from the evidence. What are the evidences?
“We do not know how the Creator created, [or] what
processes He used, for He used processes which are not now
operating anywhere in the natural universe. This is why we
refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by
scientific investigation anything about the creative processes
used by the Creator.” Duane T. Gish, a creationist has
elaborated [6]. As from the creationists themselves, there is no
way to explain or elaborate the creation. Creationists
themselves are unwilling to investigate this. Hence, creative
inference does not favour creation-science as a discovery. It
would be a mere belief, unless the required evidence is
provided.
Charles Darwin was the first to provide the scientific
argument for evolution as a natural selection, based on his
experiments and observations. However, he was not the first
one to propose evolution. Observations and evidences let him
formulate natural selection as the evolutionary mechanism.
We will analyse some of these observations deeply, in the
sub-section E.
2) CONFIRMATION
Confirmation is a logic of justification, which connects
evidence to theories, after they have been formulated. Most of
the philosophers of science consider induction as only a
confirmation. However, considering evidence as a
confirmation is often criticized too, due to the spurious
relationships. Spurious relationship is when two events that do
not have direct causal relationship are mistakenly inferred as
they do. This might be due to coincident, or probably due to
another factor that is missed, ignored, or is just not considered
in the experiment. Creationists and other pseudoscientists are
criticized for using spurious relationships to support their
claims. We will look further on this in the “Criticism and
Support” section.
Confirmation of evolution will further be discussed with
some of the observations that confirmed evolution, in the sub-
sections D and E. Creationists confirm creation-science by
using it to explain the wonders of nature that are not yet
sufficiently formulated in a scientific way. For example, why
men stopped evolving, if evolution is real? Why evolution is
unobservable in the animals such as cats and dogs, for a long
observable period in history? Because the God created
everything as they are. These observations confirm the
creation-science. This is often called as missing-links, where
the transitions are not seen. We will analyse this with the help
of a discrete mathematical model below.
C. DISCRETE MATHEMATICS AND EVOLUTION
Discrete mathematics is the study of the numbers and
mathematical structures that are not continuous. Graphs,
integers, and logical statements take the discrete format, rather
than following the continuous format of real numbers. Let's
take a deep look at the living beings of Earth, both on land and
on water. Which mathematical model do they fit?
We can easily come to the decision that this can be better
represented as a discrete model, than a continuous.
Evolutionists haven't found the fossils of the transitional
forms, such as a transition between a reptile and a bird. Given
more time, more fossils could be found. However, all the
fossils found, came as chunks. There is no clear transitional
form between a dinosaur and the contemporary living beings
of the planet, though so many fossils have found so far.
Creationists take the “missing links” as the major supporting
factor for their theory.
Let's consider the below chain of evolution, depicting the
human evolution.
Homo Habilis → Homo Ergaster → Homo Erectus →
Homo Heidelbergensis → Homo Neanderthalensis
→ Homo Sapiens (modern human)
Clearly, the above transition is not continuous, according to
the fossils. In this transition of 3 million years, the fossils
discovered were all from the above discrete points. But, does
that imply that the evolution is not continuous? Probably not.
Let's say, we find another fossil, which is of a transitional
form between Homo Habilis and Homo Ergaster. For the ease
of reference, scientists would probably categorize it as either
Homo Habilis or Homo Ergaster. If there is a considerable
difference for the fossil to be qualified as a new transitional
form, it will take its place (Let's name it, Homo Xyz) in the
above evolution chain.
Homo Habilis → Homo Xyz → Homo Ergaster →
Homo Erectus → Homo Heidelbergensis →
Homo Neanderthalensis → Homo Sapiens (modern
human)
The modified chain is depicted above, with the inclusion of
Homo Xyz. However, does that make the transition
continuous? Probably, not. It just has increased an element in
the previous discrete structure. In fact, the above case was a
real example, where a fossil of a 'missing link' between Homo
Habilis and Homo Ergaster was found [7]. Hence, it is not
feasible to argue based on the discrete/continuous models.
Evolution is supposed to be a long term process of thousands
of years. Hence, we can not expect to see a man evolving
further, through our historical eyes of just a few tens of
hundreds of years.
D. EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY
Evolution occurs in land and sea, where some animals
evolved from land to live in the sea, and vice versa. Limbs in
whales is considered a confirmation of evolution, showing the
former case [8]. Scientists have developed evidence to short-
term evolution, through experiments involving flies or beetles,
in a constrained laboratory environment, where they evolved
as predicted. Evolutionary Game Theory is developed as a
theory to algorithmically derive the evolutionary stable
strategies [9]. The observations of the experiments support the
evolution in the species.
Sample controlled test environments with large and small
sized beetles in competition for the limited food source were
created. Here the small beetles are the beetles of their natural
size, where the large beetles are the same beetles that are
genetically mutated to have a larger size. In a mixed
environment, when a large beetle competes with the small, the
large always wins the major share of the food source, leaving
the small a very little quantity of food. When the same sized
beetles compete, they always share the same amount of
benefit from the food source. However, due to the size of the
big beetles, the nutrients they receive from the same food
source is much lower than that for the smaller beetles, when
two same-sized beetles have to share the food source. In this
way, the bigger beetles have an inherent disadvantage,
regardless of their obvious advantage over the small beetles in
the competition.
We can depict the above scenario in a table, showing the
benefit they receive from the same source of food, upon
competing with each other. The numerical representation of
the benefit received by the beetles, from the experiments and
approximations, makes the model as close as possible to the
observations, to test the evolutionarily stable strategies.
Beetle 2
Small Large
Beetle 1 Small 5, 5 1, 8
Large 8, 1 3, 3
Table 1: The Body-Size Game for food
Case 1 – Introducing 'large' into a colony of 'small':
First let's consider introducing a few large beetles into a
colony of small beetles, making the population of beetles to
have a probability of 'x' to be large (and hence, '1-x' to be
small).
Expected payoff:
To a small beetle during a random encounter =
5 * probability of meeting another
small + 1 * probability of meeting a
large =
5 (1 – x ) + 1. x = 5 – 4x.
To a large beetle in a random encounter =
8 * probability of meeting a small + 3
* meeting a large =
8 * (1 – x) + 3 . x = 8 – 5x.
For a small enough fraction of x (x << 1),
8 – 5 x > 5 – 4 x (since 8 > 5)
For a small enough value of x, the fitness of a large beetle
exceeds that of a small. Hence, 'small' is not evolutionarily
stable. That means, introducing a few large beetles into the
colony will disturb its equilibrium, against the inhabitants
(small beetles) of the colony.
Case 2 – Introducing 'small' into a colony of 'large':
Conducting the experiment in a colony of large beetles to
see whether large is evolutionary stable, by introducing a few
small beetles in the colony, making the population to have x
factor of small beetles.
Expected payoff:
To a small beetle = 5.x + 1.(1 – x) = 1 + 4x
To a large beetle = 8.x + 3.(1 – x) = 3 + 5x
3 + 5 x > 1 + 4 x
For small enough x, large beetles' fitness is higher, hence
'large' is evolutionarily stable. That means, introducing some
small beetles into the colony will not disturb its equilibrium or
the inhabitants (large beetles) of the colony.
In the above equation, we can also notice that even for
larger value of x, large beetles' fitness is higher. Hence,
introduction of large beetles to a colony of small beetles will
put the large ones in an evolutionarily advantageous situation.
Introducing small beetles to a colony of large beetles will lead
the small beetles to starvation, regardless of how many beetles
are introduced. From the above two cases, we can come to the
conclusion, which would later be supported by further
observations, that genetically mutated beetles to become
larger in size as above, are evolutionarily stable, than their
smaller colleagues, which are natural and unaltered.
E. INDUCTIVE REASONING
The evidence supports this evolutionary prediction and
evolutionary game theory on which of the species will
survive, when new species (such as a genetically modified
bugs, which are bigger in size) are introduced into the colony
of an existing species (the bug in its original size, without
genetic intervention).
The above Body-Size game is also observed in many other
cases, to support evolution. One is the survival of the long-
necked giraffes where the short-necked giraffes eventually
disappeared due to the scarcity of food, as the long-neck was
evolutionarily stable in the body-size game. Similarly, two
trees in proximity tend to grow taller to grab as much as sun
light possible, in the competition for light. Though shorter tree
is in an advantage as it doesn't need much energy to have a
sustainable life, it will be overshadowed by the taller tree.
Hence the requirement to grow taller arise. The best case
would be both trees remaining short. But as with the case
study of beetles, given the mixture of both short and tall trees,
taller trees are highly likely to sustain.
Evolution could even be noticed in the natural habitats such
as the change of colour of peppered moths in many parts of
Britain. Moths became black, following the industrial
revolution. This was due to the change of the colour of the
tree trunk, branches, and leaves from white to black, as they
were covered by soot, following the industrial revolution. This
gave a competitive advantage to the black coloured moths,
while the white ones fell prey to the predators. However, as
the stains and soot of industrial revolution is long gone, the
number of white moths are noticed to be on the rise, with a
considerable downfall in the count of the black moths
recently. This shows that the nature has reverted itself to its
original state, after the few decades of post-industrial
revolution [10]. Similar examples are used to elaborate the
evolution in the natural habitats.
Given the proof and evidence of evolution in the controlled
laboratory environments as well as the observations in the
natural habitats, evolutionists use induction to show that
evolution occurs with a very high probability, in all the living
beings, and the fittest survives adhering the natural selection
model. Patterns recognized and recorded from the fossils are
used to infer that we all are from a common ancestor.
Since all the living beings are proven to follow the natural
selection and the Darwinian evolution, any living being to be
found in the future too will follow the same principles,
following the statistical syllogism. The unobserved part of the
nature looks like the observed part of the nature [11], as of the
idea of uniformity. Many phenomena of the nature are derived
from this idea. While evolution uses this idea to reason out the
unobservable history or the far future, creationists could not
get much use of this, as for creationists, the creation itself is
never observable. Nevertheless, without much scientific
theories or observations to back, creationists too inductively
reason out creation-science as the model of origin in the same
grounds. All the known living beings were created by the
God. If a new one is found, it must have been created by the
God too.
F. CREATIONISTS' LOGIC
Concerned with the increasing number of such evidences
for evolution being found, creationists tend to add some ad
hoc assumptions to the creationist theories, agreeing with
evolution to some extend as a defence. Creationists have
mentioned that “the God allows minor changes among the
species; That means, short-term natural evolution among
existing living beings is possible, without the intervention of
the God. Nevertheless, it is never possible for the nature to
turn a dog into a cat, or a monkey into a man. The initial
creation was not from the evolution itself.”
Countering this argument using observable nature is
impossible, as evolution itself is a long term process. In
Popper's terminology, this ad hoc assumption makes it
impossible to refute creation-science further, as short-term
evolution is the only observable evolution, and the long term
evolution is mostly deduced with inductive logic, from fossils,
where creationists tend to explain that the fossils are indeed
not old, but are due to the flood created by the God to destroy
and create the life in the planet.
Young Earth Creationism is the pure form of creation-
science, which conflicts and disagrees with almost all the
scientific findings and principles, by claiming the planet and
its life is just around 6000 years. How do they prove their
theories? Generally, they do not prove; rather they try to find
faults with the modern science.
1. Quote Mining
Scientists often disagree upon different theories. If a
scientist disagrees with natural selection, that doesn't make
him a de-facto creationist. Rather, he may be trying to deduce
another competing theory. Creationists tend to use parts of the
quotes from scientists out of context, to show that the
evolution-science is challenged by the scientific community.
2. Science has been wrong before
This is an attempt towards using induction as a tool, to
question the scientific beliefs. It is a form of conservative
induction – “Science has been wrong in multiple times. It will
be wrong again”. “Earlier, scientists claimed that Earth is flat
and they were wrong, and now they are claiming it is
spherical, which will be wrong too.” This is often an argument
from analogy.
3. Subjective nature of science
As Kuhn pointed out, science is mostly subjective. Politics,
Gender bias, nepotism, religious and racial bias are presence
in the scientific community. Creationists tend to use these
gaps for their advantage. They try to position creation-science
as a scientific alternative to evolution, and depict evolutionists
as having subjective opinions, hence demanding equal
treatment for evolution-science and creation-science.
4. Divine Intervention
If something can not be explained, that could be explained
by a divine intervention. Creationists tend to use the principle
of revolutionary induction (as opposed to the case discussed in
(2) above), whenever scientists were able to provide scientific
reasoning for the wonders of the world. Science was able to
explain a few things correct; but this time it will fail. The past
success merely makes an event highly likely; it doesn't make
it always successful.
Can evolution finely explain why a few frogs such as the
South-American false-eyed frog could turn to show their
backside, while changing their colours to resemble a bigger
face, when threatened by their predators? This clever
approach saves the frog's life. Why the other frogs could not
achieve this mastery? If evolution is real, all the frogs or at
least those similar to these frogs or those who live in a close
proximity to these frogs, should possess this ability. Can
evolution perfectly explain the anatomy of the worker bees?
There are a huge number of complicated creatures that are not
completely explained by the theory of natural selection. They
can be easily explained by the creation-science – by the divine
intervention.
5. Flood Geology
Flood Geology, often criticized as a pseudoscience,
describes the process where God uses flood as a mean of de-
creation and re-creation. Flood Geology myth is used by the
Young Earth Creationists to “explain” the fossils.
6. Using outdated information
Science is progressive. Darwin's model was not so close to
perfect. It was immature. Many theories have been derived in
the study of natural selection, at the early days using
induction, as it was not mature enough to come up with
deductive explanations or deduction based theories. However,
evolution-science has improved a lot lately, from many other
contributions.
Similarly, during the formulation of Darwin's natural
selection theory, those who were of different opinions from
Darwinian evolutionists, used induction to come up with
alternative ideas and solutions. However, Darwinian
Evolution and the theory of natural selection have evolved
into a matured science, lately. Quoting the outdated science
and claiming to have found faults with them doesn't make
creation-science any better, or bring it closer to be a science.
Evolution is a long term process. Similarly, creation is a
one-time process, according to the creationists. Since creation
can not be reproduced by humans, without the intervention of
the God or the intelligent designer, it can not be justified or
falsified by experiments. Creationists tend to use this as an
evidence of absence. “Dragons are green” is a good analogy to
say that the world was created by an intelligent agent using
methods that can not be formulated, reproduced, or
understood by humans. Humans can indeed not be able to
recreate life in a planet. At least, not in the foreseeable future.
Since the dragons are absent, the theory is inevitably true.
Quoting the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, on the
theories or theses that do not belong within the realm of
science as they are untestable or unevaluatable, “Not only is it
not right, it’s not even wrong! [12]”.
Interestingly, creationists tend to use induction and the
scientific models such as hypothetico-inductive model to
disprove other theological models of origin and evolution. But
the problem with their approach is, they consider the Bible as
a scientific literature, and take it literally, hence rejecting
anything that contradicts with the Bible as false.
For example, creationists disprove the fact that Earth is old,
using the below 'scientific facts' [13].
1. It will be difficult to map six Genesis days. If Earth is
old, evolution should be true. But evolution is not
true. God created everything. So Earth and its life
can not be old.
2. According to the Bible, no death before the first sin
of the man. If Earth was old, there was no death
before Adam committed the sin. It is not probable.
These statements are cyclic – similar to Popper's comment
on induction, “Using induction to prove induction.” They tend
to prove creation-science a science, using induction and other
models, using the Bible as a reference.
IV. LEGAL STATUS OF CREATION-SCIENCE
Young Earth Creationists consider the Bible accurate and
factually perfect. Creationists have even attempted to
manipulate the state laws to achieve scientific status, such that
it can be taught in public schools as an alternative scientific
theory to evolution. While it is common for any theist to have
faith on his religious book, mere belief of masses doesn't
qualify a religious belief as a science.
Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-
Science Act (Act 590), is an act made in Arkansas which
mandated the teaching of creation-science in the public
schools. Parents and several other organizations found this
unconstitutional, violating the Establishment Clause of the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In this
popular McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F.
Supp. 1255, 1258-1264 (ED Ark. 1982) case of year 1981,
Judge William Overton gave a clear demarcation criteria of
science, and concluded that creation-science is not a science
[1].
V. RELATED STUDIES
Many other theories have also been proposed, as
alternatives to evolution and creation-science. Some of them
are of theological nature, whilst the others try to be scientific,
while lacking the evidences and principals to claim the
scientific status.
A. NON-THEISTIC THEORIES
N. C. Wickramasinghe and F. Hoyle claim that life indeed
came from outer space, brought by comets from space to
Earth [14]. Unlike Creation-Science, their thoughts are not of
religious background, and hence could be considered a serious
alternative to evolution, given supportive evidences to their
theory are found.
Revolution Theory is a belief that claims that creation of
the universe and the living beings is better explained by a
revolutionary process, that involves a collection of infinite
number of revolutions [15]. However, there is no further
research is done to back this claim. This is just a proposal
without any credibility.
B. THEISTIC THEORIES
Theological beliefs as the models of origin have no
scientific credibility whatsoever, as we have discussed so far.
None of these is superior to other, though they contradict and
support each other in multiple different factors. Having
evolution and creation-science (young age creationism) as the
two ends of the spectrum, multiple theories have been formed,
trying to explain the origin. Even though inductive models are
considered over-permissive, using multiple theories of
induction, the theories given below can be proven
pseudoscience.
“Theistic evolution” is essentially an evolutionary theory,
“with the guidance of the God”. Hence its corroboration
depends on evolution. It is favoured by neither evolutionists
nor creationists, as this tends to take a compatibilistic
approach. When evolution explains itself, why do we need a
supernatural creator? This is the major criticism against the
theistic evolution from the evolutionists (can be called as non-
theistic evolutionists, to be clearer. However, it should be
clear even without mentioning non-theistic). The inclusion of
the God into the already established evolutionary theory is
considered an Occam's razor [16], as the hypothesis should be
explained by the fewest assumptions possible.
Theological Evolutionists explain the gaps in the scientific
knowledge, the immature scientific theories, the theories that
aren't formulated completely yet, using the intervention of the
God. “If something can not be explained by science, it must
have been done by the intelligent creator – the God”. This
point of view of science and God is considered “God of the
gaps”. However, such inclusion of the God into science is an
“argument from ignorance” – “The proposition is true, as it
hasn't been proven false yet”. Progressive Creationism is a
similar belief, that God, the intelligent creator allows natural
selection and some other natural processes such as gene
mutation.
Old Earth Creationism believes that Earth and its life are
indeed old. Hence, their thought is compatible with the
scientific age of the planet. Day-age creationism is a type of
old Earth creationism. The day-age creationists believe that
though the God created the universe in six days, those 6 days
are not the regular days composed of 24 hours. Rather they are
longer periods such as a million years.
After the creation-science was rejected its scientific status
by law and many scholars, attempts were made to create a
new theory supposed to be free from its religious background
to appear scientific. Creationists thus formed the Intelligent
Design theory, with almost the same concepts, with the
intelligent design of the creator as the model of origin.
VI.CRITICISM TO CREATIONISM
Creation-science and the other pseudoscientific beliefs of
creation are often criticized and mocked by the contemporary
scholars and the community. Analogies are used to depict how
the theological beliefs are non-scientific.
A. SPURIOUS RELATIONSHIPS
The theory of the stork [17], originated from a story told to
the children by their parents, “When a married couple pray the
God for a baby, the God sends a stork to place a baby inside
the mom's womb.” Some religious fanatics have extended this
story a bit more, “If an unmarried couple have sex, the stork
will get confused and will place someone else's baby into the
woman's womb. Hence, they are stealing someone else's baby
by having intercourse before the marriage.”
The above story, which was later titled, “The Theory of the
Stork (ThoS)” was proposed as a scientific alternative to the
theory of sexual reproduction (ThoSR) by Höfer et al., as a
research paper [17], as an attempt to show how scientific
endorsement could be reached based on the popular dogmatic
beliefs along with the support of low quality references and
coincidental statistical references. This is a well-cited example
for a spurious relationship. Here the number of babies born
outside the hospitals increased, with the population of storks.
Results providing a positive correlation between the number
of storks, and the birth rate, were published, giving scientific
evidence to the theory of the Stork [17]. This is referred to as
“Scientific Storkism,” to parody creationism and intelligent
design.
Most of the theories such as the ThoS are often initially
taken the form of Lie-to-Children. “Children” here refers to
anyone without much prior knowledge of scientific or the
relevant domain specific expertise adequate enough to
comprehend the complex explanation involved. The
motivation for such stories and depictions is to converge the
otherwise incommensurable worlds together, by explaining
the concepts or rather educating others in a simpler term using
a metaphor or analogy, without really going into details.
B. DOGMAS AND PARODIES
Movements such as the Flat Earth Society are strong in
their beliefs, claiming Earth is indeed flat, and the current
spherical model is just a lie [18]. Given the amount of
evidence to the spherical model of the planet, their arguments
are often of the theological ground, and dogmas along the
same lines of creation-science, with a religious bias. The Flat
Earth Society doesn't consider the scientific evidences in
favour of a round planet.
Several similar theories could be developed or
corroborated, based on inductive measures. Demon theory of
disease (demons bring us disease; not the germs. Hence,
prayers heal) as an alternative for germ theory of disease, is
another example. These theories are often started as a
superstitious dogmas, and eventually the followers even try to
use the scientific models, or models such as inductive
reasoning to portray them as science, demanding equal weight
for them in the science education for the young students, to let
them decide. Critics often use fabricated theories such as the
demon theory of disease, and the theory of the stork as
parodies, to criticize the demand of equal weight to
creationism in the scientific education.
Parody religions are developed with the intention to mock
the theological beliefs. Church of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster is a belief that a Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM)
created the world [19]. This is a parody religion, mocking the
biblical belief of creationism. Invisible Pink Unicorn [20] is
another such parody from atheists, where the unicorn is a pink
goddess and at the same time invisible, hence making it
impossible to refute the claim, letting it be true always.
Similarly, Intelligent Falling, a pseudoscientific belief that
falling objects are not falling because of gravity, rather by the
God's decision – an intelligent force, is a parody to the
intelligent design movement. Interestingly, these parodies rely
on the same logic that are used by the creationists to defend
their beliefs.
VII. CONCLUSION
Evolution-scientists have elaborated and reproduced the
evolutionary behaviour of the test animals in a controlled
environment. However, creation-scientists fail to provide such
solution to the problem of justification, except following the
dogma.
This induction based analysis points out that evolution
could be considered a valid science where creation-science is
not really a science, though it tries to justify itself by
criticizing evolution based on potential facts or observations,
such as missing links, along with a few supportive claims,
mostly using the evidence of absence. The evolution-science
itself is young and weak, regardless of its general approval.
However, alternative scientific theories to evolution are still
lacking. Existing alternatives are either with religious and
political motivation, or are without proper evidence to be
considered a scientific theory. At the same time, we should
not fall prey to the false dilemma. It is not just creation-
science, evolution, and the theories along the spectrum. If the
currently accepted evolution is refuted, or is proven
insufficient or weak to explain the origin, further studies
should be made to rectify this and make a paradigm shift on
this.
While evolution can be described by induction and the
other theories and models such as evolutionary game theory,
creation-science is beyond description. It rather conflicts with
anything that goes against the Bible, not only evolution, but
also a considerable number of theories in the fields of physics,
chemistry, astronomy, cosmology, and many others.
This paper has analysed the scientific status of the creation-
science and evolution based on inductive theories. While we
can conclude that evolution-science can be considered a
genuine science, and the creation-science lacks scientific
credibility, this research doesn't necessarily prove that
creation-science is wrong. It just focusses on the scientific
aspects of the studies concerned. The validity based on
theological beliefs are beyond the concern of science, as well
as the scope of this research paper.
REFERENCES
[1] "McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education – Decision by U.S. District
Court Judge William R. Overton". Dated this January 5, 1982. Transcribed by
Clark Dorman. Last Update: January 30, 1996. [Online] Available:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html Retrieved On: 12th
of October, 2013.
[2] Imre Lakatos, “Science and Pseudoscience,” Philosophical Papers, Vol
1. Cambridge University Press, 1977.
[3] Popper, Karl. "Science: Conjectures and refutations." (1980): pp-33.
[4] Popper, Karl. "The problem of induction." Popper selections (1985):
101-117.
[5] Carl R. Kordig, “Discovery and Justification” Philosophy of Science
Vol. 45, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 110-117 Published by: The University of
Chicago Press. [Online] Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/186901
Retrieved on: 8th October, 2013.
[6] Duane T. Gish, “Evolution – The Fossils Say No!”
[7] Martin, Daniel, “Scientists discover 'missing link between man and
apes'” April 2010. [Online] Available:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1263488/Missing-link-
evolutionary-chain-resolved-new-species-discovered-cradle-humanity.html
Retrieved on: 6th of October, 2013.
[8] Bejder, Lars, and Brian K. Hall. "Limbs in whales and limblessness in
other vertebrates: mechanisms of evolutionary and developmental
transformation and loss." Evolution & development 4.6 (2002): 445-458.
[9] Easley, David., Kleinberg, Jon, “Networks, Crowds, and Markets:
Reasoning about a Highly Connected World,” Cambridge University Press,
2010: 209 – 225.
[10] James Tozer, "Darwin's 'evolution' moth changes back from black to
white thanks to soot-free skies," Mail Online, June 2009. [Online] Available:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1194281/Darwins-evolution-
moth-changes-black-white-thanks-soot-free-skies.html Retrieved on: 12th of
October, 2013.
[11] Peter Lipton, “Induction”.
[12] Wolfgang Pauli: The Truth Of Science And The Phrase “It's Not Even
Wrong” Decemeber 2010. Cambridge Forecast Group Blog. [Online]
Available: http://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/wolfgang-
pauli-the-truth-of-science-and-the-phrase-its-not-even-weong/ Retrieved on:
12th of October, 2013.
[13] Browning, Jason; “The Age of the Earth and the Universe,” 1998
[Online] Available: http://www.bestbiblescience.org/agetalk/sld001.htm
Retrieved on: 6th of October, 2013.
[14] N. C. Wickramasinghe and F.Hoyle,“Evolution of Life: A Cosmic
Perspective” [Online] Available:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/wick_hoyle.html Retrieved on:
3rd of October, 2013.
[15] “The Revolution Theory of Creation” The Revolution Institute,
[Online] Available: http://www.revolutiontheory.org/ Retrieved on: 8th of
October, 2013.
[16] W. M. Thorburn, "Occam's razor", Mind, 24, pp. 287—288, 1915.
[17] Höfer, Thomas; Hildegard Przyrembel and Silvia Verleger (2004).
"New evidence for the Theory of the Stork". Paediatric and Perinatal
Epidemiology 18 (1): 18–22. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3016.2003.00534.x
[18] The Flat Earth Society. [Online] Available:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php Retrieved on : 12th of
October, 2013.
[19] Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. [Online] Available:
http://www.venganza.org/ Retrieved on: 8th of October, 2013.
[20] The Invisible Pink Unicorn and atheism. [Online] Available:
http://www.invisiblepinkunicorn.com/Home/About Retrieved on: 8th of
October, 2013.

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Evolution vs creation science

  • 1. Evolution vs. Creation – Science An Induction Based Analysis Pradeeban Kathiravelu kpr@kth.se Philosophy of Science: 870129-T455 KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. October 2014 Abstract — Evolution and Creation Science are two of the different models explaining the origin of life on Earth. Evolution is considered the scientific approach explaining the life on the planet, by the majority of the scientific community. However, Creation-Science is not a stranger either, with a considerable number of followers, claiming it a science or not. In this paper, we will discuss whether the creation-science is a genuine scientific alternative to evolution. This paper takes an induction based approach, without making much assumptions on the validity of evolution or creation-science, in order to reach an unbiased conclusion, based on the analysis. Keywords – Creation-Science, Evolution, Induction, Origin, Models of Origin, Problem of Induction, Game Theory, Evolutionary Game Theory. I. INTRODUCTION There are many models of origin that fail to impress the scientific community, because of their rigorous theological tone. As it is impossible to reproduce the origin by simple testable experiments, many pseudoscientific theories or claims lacking scientific backing, have also been proposed. Evolution is a model of origin, which is commonly accepted as the scientific model. Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics in the living beings in the long term, as an adoption to the natural environmental conditions. Evolutionists believe that all the living beings evolved from a single ancestor. Evolution is considered to follow a tree model, where the current living beings are the leaves in the tree, still evolving. This tree model shows a timeline, where parents show the ancestors of the creatures in the contemporary Earth. Creation-Science is considered a belief with a religious background of Christians and Jews, advocating that the God created Earth and all the life on it – “sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing” [1]. Creationists believe that the creation was a sudden and flat process, where the God created all the plants and animals, as they are, in just six days. Creation-Science is often referred to as, “Young Earth Creationism (YEC)”, as it claims Earth as young as from 5,700 to 10,000 years old. This is against the widely accepted scientific age of the life in the planet, which is 3 – 4 billions of years. Creation-science is used as a tool by the religious community to dismiss the evolutionist thoughts. Because of the religious nature itself, creation-science is often disregarded from being considered anything scientific. In the upcoming sections, we will further analyse the models of origin with theories, examples, and analogies. Section II defines the scope of this paper. Section III is the principal section of the paper, where we discuss the scientific nature of the models using the multiple inductive approaches. Section IV analyses the popular court cases regarding creation-science and its scientific and legal status, based on the events. There are even more models of origin, apart from these two. Section V looks at these models and related studies to these models of origin. Section VI looks at the criticism and support to creation-science in the popular contemporary culture. Finally, section VII will drive us to the conclusion of this paper. II. SCOPE Induction is an umbrella term, consists of multiple schools of thoughts. This paper discusses the evidence and validity of the two models of origin, under the scope of induction. Description and Justification are two major concerns of principles of induction. The problem of justification is the necessity to show that the inferential methodology is reliable. The problem of description doesn't require us to show that the inferential practice is reliable. Rather, it merely requires us to describe their stance. Description is hard, because we can not describe everything that we do as a structured principled description. This paper focuses on the principles of induction, while quoting the writings of the philosophers such as Popper, Lakatos, and Reichenbach, during the analysis. A. WHY INDUCTION? Induction leads towards a general conclusion or theory, from the given specific examples or observations. Inductive reasoning is vital for creativity and immature sciences. Most of the long term scientific processes are underdetermined. So is the origin of life. Inductive logic defines the probability of occurrence based on the available total evidence [2]. As more evidences are found, the mathematical probability of the theory becomes higher, which makes the theory qualify as scientific. Unlike the deductive arguments which attempts to reach a logically certain conclusions, inductive reasoning seeks to supply a strong evidence. How probable is this event to happen, is the question that induction attempts to answer. Many of the research papers published by the academics frequently use inductive logic. Creativity involved in science
  • 2. is often induction. It lets us derive new theories with a high probability. As a revolutionary theory, evolution, from the beginning, involved lots of theories and derivations, inductive in the nature. Creation-Science and the other alternatives too follow the same model, due to the inherent underdetermination involved in the long life of the living beings in Earth, where we are left with just a few evidences such as the fossils and also the limited observations in the natural and controlled test environments. Hence, inductive reasoning helps the models to derive theories based on the limited available information. B. FALSIFIABILITY Popper takes a strong approach towards defining demarcation criteria, which is science and which is non- science or pseudoscience. He advocates against the inductive logic. “All the swans we have seen so far are white; hence all the swans are white” is an incorrect use of induction. Similarly, using “green leaves” as a potential supportive factor to our theory of white swans is equally bad. We should also note the popular comment from Popper on Adler's “thousandfold experience” - “And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one fold. [3].” Popper elaborates that pseudosciences use induction to generate and formulate theories, and seek experiments to support their theories [4]. Popper claims falsifiability as the only way of differentiating science from pseudoscience [3, 4]. If we take the word of Popper, it should be easy for us to dismiss creation-science from considered a science, as the intelligent creator or the God, can not be falsified or hence creation-science can never be refuted. By the believers, it should be taken as the unquestionable truth beyond any doubts. C. ELIMINATION OF PSYCHOLOGISM It is not important for us to consider that creation-science is originally proposed based on the religion, with lack of scientific background. Popper advocates that the origin of the theory is irrelevant, where the position of the theory regarding how the theory explains and predicts the things matters [4]. He claims, the initial stage, the act of conceiving a theory, is irrelevant to the logical analysis of the scientific knowledge; it is the concern of empirical psychology. Focussing on “rational reconstruction” to build the situation that lead the scientist towards the discovery is pointless, as many of the discoveries were often the results of accidents or coincidence, than a preplanned activity. Evolution doesn't have to be superior to creation-science for the scientific community, just because it was proposed by scientists, not the priests. We shall restrict our analysis to how evolution and creation-science explain the origin. How these models were created or formulated and who proposed these models, is not our focus. Also for the research interest, we shall limit ourself to induction, without paying much attention to deduction or other approaches. III. INDUCTION BASED ANALYSIS As Reichenbach mentions, “The principle of induction is unreservedly accepted by the whole of science and that no man can seriously doubt this principle in everyday life either. [4]” Hence we have to adhere to the inductive reasoning for the solutions to the complicated problems of big or complicated scale, which include a long time duration or a huge space. We deduce the answers for questions such as the distance of the Sun, the shape of Earth, the origin of life in Earth, as given the large probability of the correctness of existing physical, biological, chemical, and astronomical theories, we can base our explanations on them. A. INDUCTIVE LOGIC Lakatos takes a milder approach towards induction and the the potential demarcation criteria. According to Lakatos, scientific theories evolve, as heuristics drive them to make predictions which are supported by the evidence [2]. Considering the length and timeline of evolution (or the alternative theories), the research on the model of origin is still a young field. Hence, we must treat these budding researches leniently. With time, the evidence for evolution is being found. While the rate of finding evidence for evolution is relatively slow compared to other established scientific theories, this can be reasonable considering the time and space complexity of the problem. Nevertheless no strong evidence is found against evolution, making it stronger each day. Creationists could not provide any scientific evidence to support their claims inductively. B. ROLES OF INDUCTION An inference is called inductive, if that passes from particular statements to universal statements. A typical example would be the formation of hypotheses or theories from the observations of experiments. Popper defines the Problem of Induction as the question whether inductive inferences are justified, and under which conditions are they justified. How many of the singular statements should be monitored before considering the theory to be formulated or corroborated? When we take induction should work, as it has worked previously, throughout the history of science, this is cyclic, as this is proving induction using inductive logic. Hence, in the strong sense, induction provides a milder approach in proving something; it rather provides the probability of occurrence. Based on the limited observations, we use induction to prove the validity and the probability of evolution or creation-science. Induction plays two main roles, as a logic of discovery and as a logic of justification. These two roles are well-defined with different focusses, in theory. However, in practice, the distinction often gets tougher, as discoveries are ideally well established, and whatever well-established is justified [5]. Now the question arises. How well evolution and creation- science score in terms of these roles? We will briefly look at these two roles of induction on the two models .
  • 3. 1) CREATIVE INFERENCE Creative inference is a logic of discovery, that formulates new theories, from the evidence. What are the evidences? “We do not know how the Creator created, [or] what processes He used, for He used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigation anything about the creative processes used by the Creator.” Duane T. Gish, a creationist has elaborated [6]. As from the creationists themselves, there is no way to explain or elaborate the creation. Creationists themselves are unwilling to investigate this. Hence, creative inference does not favour creation-science as a discovery. It would be a mere belief, unless the required evidence is provided. Charles Darwin was the first to provide the scientific argument for evolution as a natural selection, based on his experiments and observations. However, he was not the first one to propose evolution. Observations and evidences let him formulate natural selection as the evolutionary mechanism. We will analyse some of these observations deeply, in the sub-section E. 2) CONFIRMATION Confirmation is a logic of justification, which connects evidence to theories, after they have been formulated. Most of the philosophers of science consider induction as only a confirmation. However, considering evidence as a confirmation is often criticized too, due to the spurious relationships. Spurious relationship is when two events that do not have direct causal relationship are mistakenly inferred as they do. This might be due to coincident, or probably due to another factor that is missed, ignored, or is just not considered in the experiment. Creationists and other pseudoscientists are criticized for using spurious relationships to support their claims. We will look further on this in the “Criticism and Support” section. Confirmation of evolution will further be discussed with some of the observations that confirmed evolution, in the sub- sections D and E. Creationists confirm creation-science by using it to explain the wonders of nature that are not yet sufficiently formulated in a scientific way. For example, why men stopped evolving, if evolution is real? Why evolution is unobservable in the animals such as cats and dogs, for a long observable period in history? Because the God created everything as they are. These observations confirm the creation-science. This is often called as missing-links, where the transitions are not seen. We will analyse this with the help of a discrete mathematical model below. C. DISCRETE MATHEMATICS AND EVOLUTION Discrete mathematics is the study of the numbers and mathematical structures that are not continuous. Graphs, integers, and logical statements take the discrete format, rather than following the continuous format of real numbers. Let's take a deep look at the living beings of Earth, both on land and on water. Which mathematical model do they fit? We can easily come to the decision that this can be better represented as a discrete model, than a continuous. Evolutionists haven't found the fossils of the transitional forms, such as a transition between a reptile and a bird. Given more time, more fossils could be found. However, all the fossils found, came as chunks. There is no clear transitional form between a dinosaur and the contemporary living beings of the planet, though so many fossils have found so far. Creationists take the “missing links” as the major supporting factor for their theory. Let's consider the below chain of evolution, depicting the human evolution. Homo Habilis → Homo Ergaster → Homo Erectus → Homo Heidelbergensis → Homo Neanderthalensis → Homo Sapiens (modern human) Clearly, the above transition is not continuous, according to the fossils. In this transition of 3 million years, the fossils discovered were all from the above discrete points. But, does that imply that the evolution is not continuous? Probably not. Let's say, we find another fossil, which is of a transitional form between Homo Habilis and Homo Ergaster. For the ease of reference, scientists would probably categorize it as either Homo Habilis or Homo Ergaster. If there is a considerable difference for the fossil to be qualified as a new transitional form, it will take its place (Let's name it, Homo Xyz) in the above evolution chain. Homo Habilis → Homo Xyz → Homo Ergaster → Homo Erectus → Homo Heidelbergensis → Homo Neanderthalensis → Homo Sapiens (modern human) The modified chain is depicted above, with the inclusion of Homo Xyz. However, does that make the transition continuous? Probably, not. It just has increased an element in the previous discrete structure. In fact, the above case was a real example, where a fossil of a 'missing link' between Homo Habilis and Homo Ergaster was found [7]. Hence, it is not feasible to argue based on the discrete/continuous models. Evolution is supposed to be a long term process of thousands of years. Hence, we can not expect to see a man evolving further, through our historical eyes of just a few tens of hundreds of years. D. EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY Evolution occurs in land and sea, where some animals evolved from land to live in the sea, and vice versa. Limbs in whales is considered a confirmation of evolution, showing the former case [8]. Scientists have developed evidence to short- term evolution, through experiments involving flies or beetles, in a constrained laboratory environment, where they evolved as predicted. Evolutionary Game Theory is developed as a theory to algorithmically derive the evolutionary stable strategies [9]. The observations of the experiments support the evolution in the species. Sample controlled test environments with large and small sized beetles in competition for the limited food source were
  • 4. created. Here the small beetles are the beetles of their natural size, where the large beetles are the same beetles that are genetically mutated to have a larger size. In a mixed environment, when a large beetle competes with the small, the large always wins the major share of the food source, leaving the small a very little quantity of food. When the same sized beetles compete, they always share the same amount of benefit from the food source. However, due to the size of the big beetles, the nutrients they receive from the same food source is much lower than that for the smaller beetles, when two same-sized beetles have to share the food source. In this way, the bigger beetles have an inherent disadvantage, regardless of their obvious advantage over the small beetles in the competition. We can depict the above scenario in a table, showing the benefit they receive from the same source of food, upon competing with each other. The numerical representation of the benefit received by the beetles, from the experiments and approximations, makes the model as close as possible to the observations, to test the evolutionarily stable strategies. Beetle 2 Small Large Beetle 1 Small 5, 5 1, 8 Large 8, 1 3, 3 Table 1: The Body-Size Game for food Case 1 – Introducing 'large' into a colony of 'small': First let's consider introducing a few large beetles into a colony of small beetles, making the population of beetles to have a probability of 'x' to be large (and hence, '1-x' to be small). Expected payoff: To a small beetle during a random encounter = 5 * probability of meeting another small + 1 * probability of meeting a large = 5 (1 – x ) + 1. x = 5 – 4x. To a large beetle in a random encounter = 8 * probability of meeting a small + 3 * meeting a large = 8 * (1 – x) + 3 . x = 8 – 5x. For a small enough fraction of x (x << 1), 8 – 5 x > 5 – 4 x (since 8 > 5) For a small enough value of x, the fitness of a large beetle exceeds that of a small. Hence, 'small' is not evolutionarily stable. That means, introducing a few large beetles into the colony will disturb its equilibrium, against the inhabitants (small beetles) of the colony. Case 2 – Introducing 'small' into a colony of 'large': Conducting the experiment in a colony of large beetles to see whether large is evolutionary stable, by introducing a few small beetles in the colony, making the population to have x factor of small beetles. Expected payoff: To a small beetle = 5.x + 1.(1 – x) = 1 + 4x To a large beetle = 8.x + 3.(1 – x) = 3 + 5x 3 + 5 x > 1 + 4 x For small enough x, large beetles' fitness is higher, hence 'large' is evolutionarily stable. That means, introducing some small beetles into the colony will not disturb its equilibrium or the inhabitants (large beetles) of the colony. In the above equation, we can also notice that even for larger value of x, large beetles' fitness is higher. Hence, introduction of large beetles to a colony of small beetles will put the large ones in an evolutionarily advantageous situation. Introducing small beetles to a colony of large beetles will lead the small beetles to starvation, regardless of how many beetles are introduced. From the above two cases, we can come to the conclusion, which would later be supported by further observations, that genetically mutated beetles to become larger in size as above, are evolutionarily stable, than their smaller colleagues, which are natural and unaltered. E. INDUCTIVE REASONING The evidence supports this evolutionary prediction and evolutionary game theory on which of the species will survive, when new species (such as a genetically modified bugs, which are bigger in size) are introduced into the colony of an existing species (the bug in its original size, without genetic intervention). The above Body-Size game is also observed in many other cases, to support evolution. One is the survival of the long- necked giraffes where the short-necked giraffes eventually disappeared due to the scarcity of food, as the long-neck was evolutionarily stable in the body-size game. Similarly, two trees in proximity tend to grow taller to grab as much as sun light possible, in the competition for light. Though shorter tree is in an advantage as it doesn't need much energy to have a sustainable life, it will be overshadowed by the taller tree. Hence the requirement to grow taller arise. The best case would be both trees remaining short. But as with the case study of beetles, given the mixture of both short and tall trees, taller trees are highly likely to sustain. Evolution could even be noticed in the natural habitats such as the change of colour of peppered moths in many parts of Britain. Moths became black, following the industrial revolution. This was due to the change of the colour of the tree trunk, branches, and leaves from white to black, as they were covered by soot, following the industrial revolution. This gave a competitive advantage to the black coloured moths, while the white ones fell prey to the predators. However, as the stains and soot of industrial revolution is long gone, the number of white moths are noticed to be on the rise, with a considerable downfall in the count of the black moths recently. This shows that the nature has reverted itself to its original state, after the few decades of post-industrial revolution [10]. Similar examples are used to elaborate the evolution in the natural habitats.
  • 5. Given the proof and evidence of evolution in the controlled laboratory environments as well as the observations in the natural habitats, evolutionists use induction to show that evolution occurs with a very high probability, in all the living beings, and the fittest survives adhering the natural selection model. Patterns recognized and recorded from the fossils are used to infer that we all are from a common ancestor. Since all the living beings are proven to follow the natural selection and the Darwinian evolution, any living being to be found in the future too will follow the same principles, following the statistical syllogism. The unobserved part of the nature looks like the observed part of the nature [11], as of the idea of uniformity. Many phenomena of the nature are derived from this idea. While evolution uses this idea to reason out the unobservable history or the far future, creationists could not get much use of this, as for creationists, the creation itself is never observable. Nevertheless, without much scientific theories or observations to back, creationists too inductively reason out creation-science as the model of origin in the same grounds. All the known living beings were created by the God. If a new one is found, it must have been created by the God too. F. CREATIONISTS' LOGIC Concerned with the increasing number of such evidences for evolution being found, creationists tend to add some ad hoc assumptions to the creationist theories, agreeing with evolution to some extend as a defence. Creationists have mentioned that “the God allows minor changes among the species; That means, short-term natural evolution among existing living beings is possible, without the intervention of the God. Nevertheless, it is never possible for the nature to turn a dog into a cat, or a monkey into a man. The initial creation was not from the evolution itself.” Countering this argument using observable nature is impossible, as evolution itself is a long term process. In Popper's terminology, this ad hoc assumption makes it impossible to refute creation-science further, as short-term evolution is the only observable evolution, and the long term evolution is mostly deduced with inductive logic, from fossils, where creationists tend to explain that the fossils are indeed not old, but are due to the flood created by the God to destroy and create the life in the planet. Young Earth Creationism is the pure form of creation- science, which conflicts and disagrees with almost all the scientific findings and principles, by claiming the planet and its life is just around 6000 years. How do they prove their theories? Generally, they do not prove; rather they try to find faults with the modern science. 1. Quote Mining Scientists often disagree upon different theories. If a scientist disagrees with natural selection, that doesn't make him a de-facto creationist. Rather, he may be trying to deduce another competing theory. Creationists tend to use parts of the quotes from scientists out of context, to show that the evolution-science is challenged by the scientific community. 2. Science has been wrong before This is an attempt towards using induction as a tool, to question the scientific beliefs. It is a form of conservative induction – “Science has been wrong in multiple times. It will be wrong again”. “Earlier, scientists claimed that Earth is flat and they were wrong, and now they are claiming it is spherical, which will be wrong too.” This is often an argument from analogy. 3. Subjective nature of science As Kuhn pointed out, science is mostly subjective. Politics, Gender bias, nepotism, religious and racial bias are presence in the scientific community. Creationists tend to use these gaps for their advantage. They try to position creation-science as a scientific alternative to evolution, and depict evolutionists as having subjective opinions, hence demanding equal treatment for evolution-science and creation-science. 4. Divine Intervention If something can not be explained, that could be explained by a divine intervention. Creationists tend to use the principle of revolutionary induction (as opposed to the case discussed in (2) above), whenever scientists were able to provide scientific reasoning for the wonders of the world. Science was able to explain a few things correct; but this time it will fail. The past success merely makes an event highly likely; it doesn't make it always successful. Can evolution finely explain why a few frogs such as the South-American false-eyed frog could turn to show their backside, while changing their colours to resemble a bigger face, when threatened by their predators? This clever approach saves the frog's life. Why the other frogs could not achieve this mastery? If evolution is real, all the frogs or at least those similar to these frogs or those who live in a close proximity to these frogs, should possess this ability. Can evolution perfectly explain the anatomy of the worker bees? There are a huge number of complicated creatures that are not completely explained by the theory of natural selection. They can be easily explained by the creation-science – by the divine intervention. 5. Flood Geology Flood Geology, often criticized as a pseudoscience, describes the process where God uses flood as a mean of de- creation and re-creation. Flood Geology myth is used by the Young Earth Creationists to “explain” the fossils. 6. Using outdated information Science is progressive. Darwin's model was not so close to perfect. It was immature. Many theories have been derived in the study of natural selection, at the early days using induction, as it was not mature enough to come up with deductive explanations or deduction based theories. However, evolution-science has improved a lot lately, from many other contributions. Similarly, during the formulation of Darwin's natural selection theory, those who were of different opinions from Darwinian evolutionists, used induction to come up with alternative ideas and solutions. However, Darwinian Evolution and the theory of natural selection have evolved into a matured science, lately. Quoting the outdated science
  • 6. and claiming to have found faults with them doesn't make creation-science any better, or bring it closer to be a science. Evolution is a long term process. Similarly, creation is a one-time process, according to the creationists. Since creation can not be reproduced by humans, without the intervention of the God or the intelligent designer, it can not be justified or falsified by experiments. Creationists tend to use this as an evidence of absence. “Dragons are green” is a good analogy to say that the world was created by an intelligent agent using methods that can not be formulated, reproduced, or understood by humans. Humans can indeed not be able to recreate life in a planet. At least, not in the foreseeable future. Since the dragons are absent, the theory is inevitably true. Quoting the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, on the theories or theses that do not belong within the realm of science as they are untestable or unevaluatable, “Not only is it not right, it’s not even wrong! [12]”. Interestingly, creationists tend to use induction and the scientific models such as hypothetico-inductive model to disprove other theological models of origin and evolution. But the problem with their approach is, they consider the Bible as a scientific literature, and take it literally, hence rejecting anything that contradicts with the Bible as false. For example, creationists disprove the fact that Earth is old, using the below 'scientific facts' [13]. 1. It will be difficult to map six Genesis days. If Earth is old, evolution should be true. But evolution is not true. God created everything. So Earth and its life can not be old. 2. According to the Bible, no death before the first sin of the man. If Earth was old, there was no death before Adam committed the sin. It is not probable. These statements are cyclic – similar to Popper's comment on induction, “Using induction to prove induction.” They tend to prove creation-science a science, using induction and other models, using the Bible as a reference. IV. LEGAL STATUS OF CREATION-SCIENCE Young Earth Creationists consider the Bible accurate and factually perfect. Creationists have even attempted to manipulate the state laws to achieve scientific status, such that it can be taught in public schools as an alternative scientific theory to evolution. While it is common for any theist to have faith on his religious book, mere belief of masses doesn't qualify a religious belief as a science. Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution- Science Act (Act 590), is an act made in Arkansas which mandated the teaching of creation-science in the public schools. Parents and several other organizations found this unconstitutional, violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In this popular McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1258-1264 (ED Ark. 1982) case of year 1981, Judge William Overton gave a clear demarcation criteria of science, and concluded that creation-science is not a science [1]. V. RELATED STUDIES Many other theories have also been proposed, as alternatives to evolution and creation-science. Some of them are of theological nature, whilst the others try to be scientific, while lacking the evidences and principals to claim the scientific status. A. NON-THEISTIC THEORIES N. C. Wickramasinghe and F. Hoyle claim that life indeed came from outer space, brought by comets from space to Earth [14]. Unlike Creation-Science, their thoughts are not of religious background, and hence could be considered a serious alternative to evolution, given supportive evidences to their theory are found. Revolution Theory is a belief that claims that creation of the universe and the living beings is better explained by a revolutionary process, that involves a collection of infinite number of revolutions [15]. However, there is no further research is done to back this claim. This is just a proposal without any credibility. B. THEISTIC THEORIES Theological beliefs as the models of origin have no scientific credibility whatsoever, as we have discussed so far. None of these is superior to other, though they contradict and support each other in multiple different factors. Having evolution and creation-science (young age creationism) as the two ends of the spectrum, multiple theories have been formed, trying to explain the origin. Even though inductive models are considered over-permissive, using multiple theories of induction, the theories given below can be proven pseudoscience. “Theistic evolution” is essentially an evolutionary theory, “with the guidance of the God”. Hence its corroboration depends on evolution. It is favoured by neither evolutionists nor creationists, as this tends to take a compatibilistic approach. When evolution explains itself, why do we need a supernatural creator? This is the major criticism against the theistic evolution from the evolutionists (can be called as non- theistic evolutionists, to be clearer. However, it should be clear even without mentioning non-theistic). The inclusion of the God into the already established evolutionary theory is considered an Occam's razor [16], as the hypothesis should be explained by the fewest assumptions possible. Theological Evolutionists explain the gaps in the scientific knowledge, the immature scientific theories, the theories that aren't formulated completely yet, using the intervention of the God. “If something can not be explained by science, it must have been done by the intelligent creator – the God”. This point of view of science and God is considered “God of the gaps”. However, such inclusion of the God into science is an “argument from ignorance” – “The proposition is true, as it hasn't been proven false yet”. Progressive Creationism is a similar belief, that God, the intelligent creator allows natural selection and some other natural processes such as gene mutation.
  • 7. Old Earth Creationism believes that Earth and its life are indeed old. Hence, their thought is compatible with the scientific age of the planet. Day-age creationism is a type of old Earth creationism. The day-age creationists believe that though the God created the universe in six days, those 6 days are not the regular days composed of 24 hours. Rather they are longer periods such as a million years. After the creation-science was rejected its scientific status by law and many scholars, attempts were made to create a new theory supposed to be free from its religious background to appear scientific. Creationists thus formed the Intelligent Design theory, with almost the same concepts, with the intelligent design of the creator as the model of origin. VI.CRITICISM TO CREATIONISM Creation-science and the other pseudoscientific beliefs of creation are often criticized and mocked by the contemporary scholars and the community. Analogies are used to depict how the theological beliefs are non-scientific. A. SPURIOUS RELATIONSHIPS The theory of the stork [17], originated from a story told to the children by their parents, “When a married couple pray the God for a baby, the God sends a stork to place a baby inside the mom's womb.” Some religious fanatics have extended this story a bit more, “If an unmarried couple have sex, the stork will get confused and will place someone else's baby into the woman's womb. Hence, they are stealing someone else's baby by having intercourse before the marriage.” The above story, which was later titled, “The Theory of the Stork (ThoS)” was proposed as a scientific alternative to the theory of sexual reproduction (ThoSR) by Höfer et al., as a research paper [17], as an attempt to show how scientific endorsement could be reached based on the popular dogmatic beliefs along with the support of low quality references and coincidental statistical references. This is a well-cited example for a spurious relationship. Here the number of babies born outside the hospitals increased, with the population of storks. Results providing a positive correlation between the number of storks, and the birth rate, were published, giving scientific evidence to the theory of the Stork [17]. This is referred to as “Scientific Storkism,” to parody creationism and intelligent design. Most of the theories such as the ThoS are often initially taken the form of Lie-to-Children. “Children” here refers to anyone without much prior knowledge of scientific or the relevant domain specific expertise adequate enough to comprehend the complex explanation involved. The motivation for such stories and depictions is to converge the otherwise incommensurable worlds together, by explaining the concepts or rather educating others in a simpler term using a metaphor or analogy, without really going into details. B. DOGMAS AND PARODIES Movements such as the Flat Earth Society are strong in their beliefs, claiming Earth is indeed flat, and the current spherical model is just a lie [18]. Given the amount of evidence to the spherical model of the planet, their arguments are often of the theological ground, and dogmas along the same lines of creation-science, with a religious bias. The Flat Earth Society doesn't consider the scientific evidences in favour of a round planet. Several similar theories could be developed or corroborated, based on inductive measures. Demon theory of disease (demons bring us disease; not the germs. Hence, prayers heal) as an alternative for germ theory of disease, is another example. These theories are often started as a superstitious dogmas, and eventually the followers even try to use the scientific models, or models such as inductive reasoning to portray them as science, demanding equal weight for them in the science education for the young students, to let them decide. Critics often use fabricated theories such as the demon theory of disease, and the theory of the stork as parodies, to criticize the demand of equal weight to creationism in the scientific education. Parody religions are developed with the intention to mock the theological beliefs. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a belief that a Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) created the world [19]. This is a parody religion, mocking the biblical belief of creationism. Invisible Pink Unicorn [20] is another such parody from atheists, where the unicorn is a pink goddess and at the same time invisible, hence making it impossible to refute the claim, letting it be true always. Similarly, Intelligent Falling, a pseudoscientific belief that falling objects are not falling because of gravity, rather by the God's decision – an intelligent force, is a parody to the intelligent design movement. Interestingly, these parodies rely on the same logic that are used by the creationists to defend their beliefs. VII. CONCLUSION Evolution-scientists have elaborated and reproduced the evolutionary behaviour of the test animals in a controlled environment. However, creation-scientists fail to provide such solution to the problem of justification, except following the dogma. This induction based analysis points out that evolution could be considered a valid science where creation-science is not really a science, though it tries to justify itself by criticizing evolution based on potential facts or observations, such as missing links, along with a few supportive claims, mostly using the evidence of absence. The evolution-science itself is young and weak, regardless of its general approval. However, alternative scientific theories to evolution are still lacking. Existing alternatives are either with religious and political motivation, or are without proper evidence to be considered a scientific theory. At the same time, we should not fall prey to the false dilemma. It is not just creation- science, evolution, and the theories along the spectrum. If the currently accepted evolution is refuted, or is proven insufficient or weak to explain the origin, further studies should be made to rectify this and make a paradigm shift on this.
  • 8. While evolution can be described by induction and the other theories and models such as evolutionary game theory, creation-science is beyond description. It rather conflicts with anything that goes against the Bible, not only evolution, but also a considerable number of theories in the fields of physics, chemistry, astronomy, cosmology, and many others. This paper has analysed the scientific status of the creation- science and evolution based on inductive theories. While we can conclude that evolution-science can be considered a genuine science, and the creation-science lacks scientific credibility, this research doesn't necessarily prove that creation-science is wrong. It just focusses on the scientific aspects of the studies concerned. The validity based on theological beliefs are beyond the concern of science, as well as the scope of this research paper. REFERENCES [1] "McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education – Decision by U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton". Dated this January 5, 1982. Transcribed by Clark Dorman. Last Update: January 30, 1996. [Online] Available: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html Retrieved On: 12th of October, 2013. [2] Imre Lakatos, “Science and Pseudoscience,” Philosophical Papers, Vol 1. Cambridge University Press, 1977. [3] Popper, Karl. "Science: Conjectures and refutations." (1980): pp-33. [4] Popper, Karl. "The problem of induction." Popper selections (1985): 101-117. [5] Carl R. Kordig, “Discovery and Justification” Philosophy of Science Vol. 45, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 110-117 Published by: The University of Chicago Press. [Online] Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/186901 Retrieved on: 8th October, 2013. [6] Duane T. Gish, “Evolution – The Fossils Say No!” [7] Martin, Daniel, “Scientists discover 'missing link between man and apes'” April 2010. [Online] Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1263488/Missing-link- evolutionary-chain-resolved-new-species-discovered-cradle-humanity.html Retrieved on: 6th of October, 2013. [8] Bejder, Lars, and Brian K. Hall. "Limbs in whales and limblessness in other vertebrates: mechanisms of evolutionary and developmental transformation and loss." Evolution & development 4.6 (2002): 445-458. [9] Easley, David., Kleinberg, Jon, “Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World,” Cambridge University Press, 2010: 209 – 225. [10] James Tozer, "Darwin's 'evolution' moth changes back from black to white thanks to soot-free skies," Mail Online, June 2009. [Online] Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1194281/Darwins-evolution- moth-changes-black-white-thanks-soot-free-skies.html Retrieved on: 12th of October, 2013. [11] Peter Lipton, “Induction”. [12] Wolfgang Pauli: The Truth Of Science And The Phrase “It's Not Even Wrong” Decemeber 2010. Cambridge Forecast Group Blog. [Online] Available: http://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/wolfgang- pauli-the-truth-of-science-and-the-phrase-its-not-even-weong/ Retrieved on: 12th of October, 2013. [13] Browning, Jason; “The Age of the Earth and the Universe,” 1998 [Online] Available: http://www.bestbiblescience.org/agetalk/sld001.htm Retrieved on: 6th of October, 2013. [14] N. C. Wickramasinghe and F.Hoyle,“Evolution of Life: A Cosmic Perspective” [Online] Available: http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/wick_hoyle.html Retrieved on: 3rd of October, 2013. [15] “The Revolution Theory of Creation” The Revolution Institute, [Online] Available: http://www.revolutiontheory.org/ Retrieved on: 8th of October, 2013. [16] W. M. Thorburn, "Occam's razor", Mind, 24, pp. 287—288, 1915. [17] Höfer, Thomas; Hildegard Przyrembel and Silvia Verleger (2004). "New evidence for the Theory of the Stork". Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 18 (1): 18–22. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3016.2003.00534.x [18] The Flat Earth Society. [Online] Available: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php Retrieved on : 12th of October, 2013. [19] Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. [Online] Available: http://www.venganza.org/ Retrieved on: 8th of October, 2013. [20] The Invisible Pink Unicorn and atheism. [Online] Available: http://www.invisiblepinkunicorn.com/Home/About Retrieved on: 8th of October, 2013.