If people who were interested in teaching the biblical version of God's creation of Adam and Eve referred to this story as the biblical version of the creation of Adam and Eve, very few people could object. There is most certainly a book referred to as the Bible, and in it there is a story about how God created Adam from the earth itself and then created Eve from Adam. Christians know this story, as do Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists. It is a metaphor for some people, divinely revealed truth for others, an allegory for some, patent nonsense to others, simply a good yarn to still others. But it is - when presented as a story that is told in the Bible - inherently uncontroversial.
However, the field that is called by its supporters "creation science" is inherently highly controversial - for it seeks the mantle of scientific prestige for what many consider not to be science at all. This paper examines the epistemological claims of creation science and demonstrates that such claims, or such questions, have a millennia-old tradition within the West, extending back at least to the writings on medicine by Hippocrates.
Science has great prestige within contemporary American culture, and it is no doubt for this reason that people (most of them evangelical Christians) have adopted the name of creation science for the teaching of the story of Genesis. Science is something that is generally valued by all Americans; therefore anything that is labeled as science (and that people come to believe to be scientific) has a better chance of being supported by a large number of Americans. We see such claims in a range of arenas today, perhaps most obviously within the realm of advertising, where everything from teeth-whitening creams to weight-loss products are labeled with the imprimatur of science to coach us into believing in their validity.
Although science has great prestige in America the simple fact is that the level of educatio...