Creation Bullet Series: Destroying Darwinism, One Bullet at a Time
“Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” — 1 Timothy 6:20 (KJV)
Original Creation Bullet by Bill Nowers:
Science: A Greatly Misunderstood Word
Just as the definition of evolution as microevolution or macroevolution is critical to the understanding of the creation debate, so also must science be clearly defined. All so-called science is not the same.
Operational science is factual science and includes evidence of events or actions that can be clearly identified, accurately measured, proven by repetition, etc. It includes for example gravity, which can be measured, identified, predicted, and tested, over and over. It cannot include any incident or examples of ancient happenings that cannot be tested or repeated. Operational science is what most people think of when they hear the word.
Historical science is science based on assumptions or opinions. It may or may not be true, but it can never be proven. In fact what is usually referred to as historical science is really just a historical event, or a belief that a historical event occurred. Everyone believes in operational science, but creationists and evolutionists differ on historical science since it is based on preconceived assumptions.
Christians believe there is a God who created everything, and they base their interpretations of ancient happenings on that belief. Evolutionists believe there is no God and everything just happened by chance. They base all their interpretations of historic events on that belief. It is this basic assumption — that there is no God — that underlies all of the evolutionist’s beliefs.
It is unfortunate that many Christians, and theistic evolutionists, have tried to compromise the Bible with so-called historical science, when in fact there is not a single passage in the Bible that even hints of any possibility of macroevolution being involved in our past. While we can never prove anything that is historical science, we can and do prove that life cannot come from non-life. We can prove that Darwinian evolution is not possible, while logic and real science fully support creation.
Bill Nowers does in three pages what most textbooks refuse to do in three hundred. He defines the word. And once “science” is properly defined, the creation-evolution debate looks very different than the textbook version most of us were handed in school.
Two Different Sciences, Two Different Standards
The word “science” gets used to describe two completely different things, and the confusion is deliberate. Operational science is the kind that built your microwave, put a man on the moon, and gave us modern medicine. It is testable. It is repeatable. It is observable today, by anyone, anywhere on earth. Drop a coffee cup a hundred times and it falls a hundred times. That is operational science, and no Christian disputes a word of it.
Historical science is something else entirely. It looks at evidence in the present and tries to reconstruct events nobody witnessed. It cannot be tested in a lab. It cannot be repeated. It depends — entirely — on what the scientist already believes about what is possible.
Operational science discovers. Historical science interprets. The two are not the same, and the difference is the whole ball game.
What’s Hiding in the Lab Coat
Every scientist who studies origins starts with assumptions. There is no neutral ground, no view from nowhere, no purely objective stance. The only question is which assumptions a person brings to the evidence.
The Christian assumes there is a God who created everything, and he interprets the fossils, the rocks, and the genetic code in light of that belief. The evolutionist assumes there is no God, and he interprets the same evidence in light of that belief. Both interpretations are framed by faith commitments made before the first rock was ever picked up.
However, only one side will admit it. The reality is that what gets called “science” in the origins debate is often philosophy wearing a lab coat. As believers, we must learn to spot the difference.
Ask the Right Question
The next time someone tells you “science has proven evolution” or “science has shown the earth is billions of years old,” ask a simple follow-up: Which kind of science?
If they mean operational science — something tested, repeated, and observed today — they cannot point to a single example. Nobody has ever observed one kind of creature changing into a fundamentally different kind. Nobody has ever observed life arising from non-life. Nobody has watched the earth age.
If they mean historical science — an interpretation of present evidence based on assumptions about the unobservable past — then they are doing exactly what Bill Nowers describes: presenting a belief about ancient events, not a proven fact. That is a fair conversation to have. But it is no longer the conversation evolutionists usually want to have, because once the assumptions come into view, the certainty disappears.
The Witness Who Was There
If historical claims about the past require trust in a credible witness, then the question is not do we trust witnesses? — we already do, every day. The question is which witness do we trust?
God puts the issue plainly in Job 38:4: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” No human was there. No scientist was there. Only God was there. He has given us His testimony in Genesis 1, and that testimony does not bend to fit the assumptions of those who reject Him.
No argument on a page can change a heart — but the God who was there in the beginning can. And He is calling.
Next week: Creation Bullet #15 — “Bible-Believing Evolutionists” — an oxymoron Bill takes apart with characteristic precision.
Explore more at the VCA Young Earth Creationism page →
About the Author – In Memoriam
Bill Nowers (1925–2021) was a long-time VCA Board Member and founder of Creation & Evolution Science Ministries. His legacy of defending biblical truth lives on through this powerful series.
