A cry for help

[Kuroneko]

Philosophically speaking, you can argue that pretty much anything can be considered a science, insofar as the word "science" covers pretty much any attempt to gain knowledge about the universe regardless of method.

Yes, but I would not consider such a position acceptable.

But if the test of whether something can be considered a "science" is the correct application of the scientific method, then creationism obviously fails ... . And the distinction is moot anyway, since neither bad science or non-science are acceptable in the science classroom.

A problem here is that the scientific method has been historically characterized in different ways in different time periods. Creationism could be construed as a kind of attempted paradigm shift, to put it in Kuhn's terms. This is dangerous, since judging creationism false according to the established paradigms (current science) is not in itself a fault--all new paradigms would be so. That creationism is wholly undeserving of such alternative-paradigm consideration becomes harder to prove, and would require a historical account of science, which is why I favor Thagard's progressiveness-relative-to-competitors account of pseudoscience (e.g., what results did it historically give us, and have the alternative theories been better at solving similar problems?) as the most relevant. You're most likely right in that it might be best to concentrate on creationism-is-not-good-science rather than anything stronger, but the reason for my concern in the first place is because having faulty characterizations of science in legal trials gives it a stamp of officiality that is all too easy to exploit. I also consider proving creationism non-scientific a worthy philosophical excercise in its own right.

[Darth Wong]

The biggest problem with attacking creationism in that way is that there are two forms of it: so-called "intelligent design" (which is so vague that it generates no testable predictions) and Biblical creationism (which generates numerous testable predictions, all horribly inaccurate). When you make an argument against the scientific merits of one type of creationism, its advocates often respond by acting as though you were attacking the other one, against which this particular criticism does not apply.

As for proving that creationism is not science, I agree that it would be a very bad thing to let lawyers decide how acceptable scientific methods should be defined. The fact that some people reject parsimony as a necessary component of scientific methods is problematic as well, since the bulk of the population does not even really grasp what parsimony is.

[RedImperator]

I was actually worried this was the approach they'd take in the Cobb County, GA textbook sticker case (whose name escapes me at the moment).

How so? It was my understanding that whatever the motivations for the introduction of the stickers were (and they should be obvious), there were no "alternative theories" actually proposed. Or are you reffering to attempts to falsify evolution instead?

The way I was thinking they might go at it is to argue that a sticker that merely claimed evolution was in dispute, which is, on its surface, a religiously neutral claim. The fact that it's plainly wrong is irrevelant, because an inaccuracy in a textbook, even one deliberately introduced, isn't a 1st Amendment issue to my knwoledge. I think the example I used then was a sticker that claimed the accepted account of the Trail of Tears (since we're dealing with Georgia) is just a theory and in dispute--complete nonsense, but not a case for the courts.

I admit it's a long shot--I can't see any way around the Lemon test considering the nature of the school board debates beforehand--but it looked like the only viable legal strategy the defense had.

[Darth Wong]

It occurs to me that if one wants to show how creationism is a non-science, than we should consider the fact that before one judges whether a hypothesis is falsifiable, one must first ask whether it is even explanatory.

The entire goal of a scientific theory is to explain the data, and a theory which is non-explanatory is therefore not a scientific theory. "But intelligent design explains that which evolution cannot!" its supporters will screech. To which I can only retort "how"? At no point do intelligent design supporters ever explain why or how the premise "an intelligent designer" necessarily produces a prediction of complexity (their favourite claim).

It is said that every scientific theory produces predictions, and ideally testable predictions. But people often forget to ask how creationism goes from its premises to its predictions, and simply take that middle step for granted when in fact there is no reason to do so. How does the premise "intelligent designer" produce the prediction that there should be an enormously complicated biosystem? I have yet to hear anyone produce an answer, and so what we have is a hypothesis from which one apparently derives predictions via intuition.

[Petrosjko]

I haven't really tangled with any ID fans, since YEC is the big thing around these parts. So what's their comeback to the notion that if complexity innately requires a designer, the designer would require a designer ad infinitum? By the complexity argument, nothing complex would ever be formed and hence none of us would exist.