Evolution and the Creationismists

Adam Laats, in an essay online at Chronicle of Higher Ed, writes this helpful description:
"As it stands, scientists' blundering hostility toward creationism actually encourages creationist belief. By offering a stark division between religious faith and scientific belief, evolutionary scientists have pushed creationists away from embracing evolutionary ideas. And, by assuming that only ignorance could explain creationist beliefs, scientists have unwittingly fostered bitter resentment among the creationists, the very people with whom they should be hoping to connect."

This paragraph gains traction by highlighting the dichotomous thinking involved between evolution and creationism. For one to to be valid, the other must be invalid. Truth is a kind of mercantilism reality, an either/or confrontation with what is.  Except, in this case, that very dichotomy is the problem.

One of the stronger arguments against teaching Creationism (or its variants, like I.D.) in science classrooms is that Creationism is not scientific.  Evolution is.  Creationism could be a topic in a Social Studies class, even a literature class. Not science because ... it is not scientific.  Making the choice one of either believing in Creationism or believing in evolution obviates that strength.  It all but forces a science teacher to incorporate Creationism into the curriculum; the dichotomy needs to be resolved.  Science v. Creationism.

For the moment, ignore the implications of believing one or the other.  Creationism, then, could be understood as a cosmology, not the process after cosmogenics.  Evolution, on the other hand, could be understood as the process after cosmogenics, not a theory of cosmology.  One narrates the beginning; the other, what happens next.   While I do not find much credence in Creationism, I can not impeach the theory.  It is un-impeachable, another trait that removes it from the scientific.  While I can not prove evolution, I can attempt to impeach it (in theory I could, had I enough background and methodology), its virtue of being scientific.

Laats makes a good point about taking seriously the reasoning behind those who back Creationism.  But because the belief is not science, and thus not open to rebuke, Creationismists should never be engaged in a battle of right v. wrong.  As Stephen Jay Gould wrote, treating them as "non-overlapping magesteria" is not a abdication of either.  It is, rather, a recognition that they are non-comparable.