Neither theory is provable (testable, repeatable, etc.). Either life evolved out of non-living chemicals, or aliens seeded the universe (but this only raises the question of how the aliens became alive), or God created life as described in Genesis 1–2.Either the universe started out as a singularity, which billions of years ago exploded and has caused an expanding universe ever since, or God created it ex nihilo.Historical science (creationist or secular) by its very nature is based on a worldview i.e., religion. Getting back to Ken’s quote, you’ll notice that he did not say “prove” but “explains the evidence.” I realize the semantics argument creeps in here, but Ken is trying to stress that observational science exhibits evidence that corresponds to a recent creation. What we contend is that observational science has many evidences that line up with a young earth or universe but seem contradictory to an old universe. The creationist astronomer would then hypothesize an explanation for the distant starlight problem, which the evolutionist would rebut, etc. He would, of course, claim that he arrived at that date due to observational measurements of light from distant galaxies.

A cosmic evolutionary astronomer sees the same thing but concludes there must be a constant source of comets, because he believes the universe is 13.7 billion years old. He concludes that the universe must be less than 100,000 years old.

I understand that the following is a simplistic example, but bear with me.Ī creationist astronomer sees comets in the universe and realizes they have a limited “existence” of at most 100,000 years. The different conclusions, therefore, must be based on presuppositions (or worldviews). Both creationists and evolutionists have the same sets of data, the same evidence, and often the same techniques to examine their evidence. Therefore, we would state that you cannot “empirically prove” them. As you pointed out, we have stated that neither creationism nor cosmic evolution nor Darwinian biological evolution is observational science, and they are not observable, testable, repeatable, falsifiable events. Not to try to frame things as a semantics debate, but there is some validity to that statement as regards your question. I believe you are referring to the article, “ Your Tax Dollars at Work-Indoctrination in Millions of Years,” from Ken Ham’s blog. The first recent major use of this concept, contrasting operational (observational) science with origins (historical) science, was in The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984) by Charles Thaxton. Thank you for contacting Answers in Genesis. But in recent articles, Ken is often saying that “observational science confirms that millions of years and evolution can’t be true and how the Genesis account of origins explains the evidence.” So? Which is it? Or is “historical” simply anything which contradicts and “observational” anything that supports you? I predict you won’t answer this question.

On your site you say, “Neither creation nor evolution is directly observable, testable, repeatable, or falsifiable,” and therefore neither qualifies as observational science. By your definition, astronomy goes out the window as a subjective “historical” science because we can’t repeat supernovas in a lab, and it took too long for the light to hit our telescope. To my knowledge, either a field has data or doesn’t, and it is the patterns in this data that either support a hypothesis or don’t. “observational” science before seeing them on your website. As a scientist, I never encountered the terms “historical” vs.

Observation in science