Is creationism scientific? Is creationism compatible with the scientific method?

However, Darwin acknowledged a Creator and from his standpoint this is scientific. We acknowledge a Creator, not One who created a primordial germ and then retired, but One who created all things in nature as we see them, upholding and sustaining His creation by the word of His power, and we consider this view is scientific and that the testimony of zoology, of the rocks, of skeleton remains, of archaeology, all go to prove it, which cannot by any stretch of imagination be claimed for evolution. Darwin’s admissions are deadly.

Nevertheless, though Adam's state was far from that of which Christ is the risen Head, he evidently was made to have a portion, though a creature, above all the creation that surrounded him, "in God's image, after His likeness." How utterly false in presence of the Bible are the speculations of evolution, an hypothesis logically at issue with those fixed laws of nature which the same philosophers cry up to the exclusion of God! For how reconcile invariable law with change of species? The truth is that real science depends upon the uniformity of results, and consists in discovering and classifying them. This does not hinder variation through circumstances, failing which the original type returns.

Again, as natural science is essentially based on the reality and continuance of species, so it can give no account of origins. If honest, it admits there must be a cause, and an adequate one; but here, as science, it is and must be wholly ignorant. God's word alone reveals the truth; and of all reveries, none viler than the ignorance which refuses to learn and dares to defy divine revelation, by conceiving man a developed ape, fish, seaweed, or aught else. The truth is that primordial causes are beyond science; which, instead of honestly owning its ignorance, pretends to deny the creation which scripture clearly reveals. God alone could create; and He declares that He has done so, and in what order. Science would gladly learn if not sceptical; for its province lies in investigating effects, and cannot reach up to primordial causes, which it is of all moment to know if revealed. But we can only know them from God's testimony, which is simple if we were.

But for Christianity such a division of the empire must be ruin in the end. Christ, if not a, universal King, is none. If the physical universe say "I know Him not," where, then, is this kingdom of His? Thus science has gone on, taking fullest advantage of the concession made to it, pushing further and further its limits continually, insisting on full freedom for speculation, — on having room to add to the history of the world its dreams of the beginning, its prophecies of the end, and to fill up all the gaps between after its own fashion. If we object, we are told that "the world moves still," in spite of the efforts of theologians to arrest it. "Scripture was not intended to teach science." If science, then, can only conjecture a cosmogony, how life was produced, how species originated, how man descended (or ascended), nay, as to the birth of religion itself, the spectre of Galileo warns off interference, and Scripture, by the concession, must retire before it. Science is knowledge reasoned out and verified, — knowledge verified by facts of observation. But then the first of Genesis has not the value of the poorest text-book of geology: it is not reasoned out, but revealed authoritatively. And here, after all, is the stumbling-block for the mere "naturalist": can the supernatural be upon any terms with the natural? — can it, above all, be admitted as really "super" to the "natural"? — which means, of course, can it have leave to exist?

That the creation account is unscientific and in clash with the discoveries of modern science is one of the common statements. It has, however, no foundation whatever. The proofs that there is no error in the account of creation as revealed in the first chapter of Genesis have been furnished by the investigation of science. The order of creation as given in the first chapter is the order, which, after years of searching--the most laborious searching--science has discovered. Over and over again science has with its guesses and speculations been forced to bow in submission before the simple and brief description of the creation in God's Word. There is no clash between the Bible and the results of true scientific research. Geology, astronomy, and other sciences have had to retrace their steps more than once and acknowledge their mistake; the first chapter of Genesis will never have to do that.

Years ago scientists ridiculed the divine statement that the first thing called into existence was light: "let there be light," and that the sun was made on the fourth day. That sneer is forever silenced, for science has found out that light existed first. Again for a long time it was denied that vegetation came first before animal life was on this globe. This denial has likewise been stopped by scientific discoveries. Other evidences that the Bible is right and science had to accept the truthfulness of the creation account we must pass by. What scientists should explain is how in a simple record of a few verses, which antedates all scientific research and discovery, such accurate information is given without any error whatsoever. Where did Moses get his marvellous knowledge which the scientific research of the nineteenth century confirms correct in every way? There is only one answer. It is the revelation of God.

This becomes still more evident when the creation chapter in Genesis is compared with the conceptions of the origin of the earth as found in the records of the oldest nations. What ridiculous things were believed concerning creation and the universe! Why did Moses not write the same childish things but instead gives a majestic account of the creation of the earth and the heavens? The answer is, and ever will be, his account is the revelation of God how the earth and the heavens came into existence.

The statement which one hears so often from sneering lips, that the creation account is unscientific, has no foundation. That it is non-scientific is an entirely different matter. Galileo, the astronomer, truthfully said, "The Scriptures were given, not to tell us how the heavens go, but to teach us how to go to heaven." Yet, as already mentioned in our introduction, science had to acknowledge over and over again the correctness of the creation account and withdraw the objections and assaults which had been made.

Truly we may say, An enemy, time enemy has done this. There is no allegory whatever, any more than in a dumb ass which, speaking with man's voice, forbad the folly of the prophet. Here it was the great adversary of God and man, who employed the crafty serpent as the vehicle of his temptation. The great apostle of the Gentiles in 2 Cor. 11:3 has ruled in the Spirit that Gen. 3 presents the actual, no fable or myth, but a positive fact: just as we have seen the fallacy of confounding the six successive days with the vast periods of geology that preceded them. A "scientific" account of creation Gen. 1 is in no way; but it does supply with plain certainty the divine revelation of that creation of which all true science professes its total ignorance. The records written in the rocks are wholly out of view in the scriptural account, which speaks solely of the absolute beginning in general, and in detail only of the time immediately connected with man's earth. The scene of geological research lies between, and is passed by in scripture as quite outside its moral scope, so that those labour in vain who look for a scientific tally there.

Take only the swamping of the human race with the brute in contrast with the affectingly solemn and self-evidently true place assigned to man, as the chief ruler of creation in Gen. 1, and in moral relation to God as well as the creature in Gen. 2 where we hear of Jehovah Elohim inbreathing his soul alone of all beings on the earth. Is this nothing? or is it "false science?" The fact is that it is not science at all; and the exactest science could not attest it. It is the revealed light of God, which is the truth, and immeasurably above all science. One can only grieve over professing Christians beguiled by such conundrums; but we must be indignant that they claim to be Christian ministers, seeing that they slight the scriptures though divinely inspired, and bow to the passing delusions to which scientists are notoriously liable like others. Never has any savant of any land or tongue produced an account of creation to compare with Gen. 1, still less with its profound and necessary supplement in Gen. 2.

It is not the part of wisdom for a Christian to deny facts. Why reject the phenomena which indicate states not only of the earth, but of living creatures there before Adam was made, that is, before the six days? Otherwise, how can we escape the supposition, that God was pleased to make vast quantities of fossilized objects, giving the appearance of having lived on the earth, which never did? Are you prepared to accept the notion that God studiously gave a semblance of that which was not true? There are remains of animals, and animals too that were evidently made with distinct objects and with characteristics altogether different from those of any animals to be found now, and supposing a correspondent state of things (as for instance, when the world was a vast marsh and enormous heat prevailed). There is no ground whatever to doubt these facts. I do not see that a Christian shows his wisdom, or his faith either, by denying anything of the sort. Granted that being unrevealed it is not a point for faith; it is a thing that man must ascertain and prove if he can, and thus it is a question of knowledge or ignorance. One cannot talk correctly about faith in science. Faith has nothing to do with science, nor again has science with faith. What the scientific men have to do is to collect and marshal their facts; then let them and others judge their conclusions. This does not appear to me at all arrogant — but what every soul who can ought to do — every one who takes the trouble of making himself master of the facts they present. It does not follow that the most diligent and successful collectors of facts are the best deducers from them. This may or may not be. A wise man has not a word to say against science itself or known facts. I do complain of the precipitancy and evident animus with which many men have chosen to use what they could in an unformed and crude state of science to contradict the word of God. Neither wisdom nor reverence appears in such ways.

We have as yet, however, not entered upon the field of science proper. We are about to do so, and to inquire what help may be gained from Scripture for the detailed study of nature. In this numerical system, of which both Scripture and nature are immensely fuller than has been thought, we ought to find a wonderful help, if it be (as we have essayed to show,) the same system that pervades both. Of this too, all future applications will be a continual test. Thus every real discovery will be verified as it is made, in complete accordance with the not unreasonable demand of Mr. Huxley. Nay, it may be justly doubted whether he can produce, for a large number of what he accepts as scientific verities, any verification so complete. That it comes to him from Scripture ought not to prejudice it in his eyes; nor can the refusal of it for this reason be justified in the least degree under the warrant of science.

As a general fact there is an order from the positions relatively of these animals, shells, fishes, etc. There is a proof of order in these, though I have no interest in it myself one way or another. Clearly too scripture leaves a gap, and that gap is ample for any such purpose. We find God creates things "good."