Science rests on a fundamental assumption: That we can understand nature. Life, the universe and everything may be very complicated, but the cosmos hasn’t been constructed deliberately to fool us.

This assumption can’t be proved, but it seems consistent with the history of science. Some scientists and theologians even argue that the fact that the universe is intelligible itself reflects the actions of Intelligence.

As a religious person myself, I have some sympathy with this metaphysical stance. The problem comes when this metaphysical position is claimed to be a scientific explanation, or worse, is advanced as an alternative to a scientific explanation.

To qualify as a scientific explanation, a hypothesis must include a mechanism that can be tested, and either falsified or supported, by the methods of science: experiments and/or observations of nature. Creationism in the broad sense so far has not met this criterion. Divine action, if it exists, is neither testable nor measurable.

Scientists therefore perceive no need for, or value in, creationism as a scientific explanation for the origin and diversity of life, but are not necessarily hostile to the metaphysical notion of a creator. However, there are many shades of creationism, and the most common version reflects a literal reading of the biblical book of Genesis. “Young earth” or “scientific” creationism contends that the age of the earth and the universe is measured in thousands of years, rather than the much longer intervals of time discovered by geologists and astronomers.

Creationism in this narrower sense is also presented as an alternative to evolution as an explanation for the history of life. Some creationists even contend that the Earth is the center of the universe, with the sun, planets and stars moving around it and us. My colleagues and I do have a problem with creationism in these narrower senses.

Part of our objection is based on the scientific evidence itself; the evidence for young earth creationism, when critically examined, doesn’t live up to its advertising. I’ll give one example. The limestone and dolostone bed (Glen Rose Formation) of the Paluxy River in Texas preserves one of the world’s most spectacular occurrences of fossilized dinosaur footprints, with thousands of tracks in dozens of trackways. Creationists have claimed that there are also footprints of both normal-sized and gigantic humans among the dinosaur tracks, thus proving that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, and calling into question the scientific conclusion that the time of the dinosaurs was long before our own. The Paluxy River is one of the sites of my field research, and I have seen the alleged “man tracks.” Those of them that are footprints at all are better explained as poorly preserved footprints of bipedal dinosaurs.

But an even greater objection to creationism in the narrower sense is the motivation behind it. Those who push for teaching creationism in public schools are primarily driven by a desire to have science teaching reflect and reinforce their literal reading of the opening chapters of Genesis. This in turn is based on a way of understanding the Bible that has a long pedigree in Pro- testantism in general, and American Protestantism in particular.

Historians of religion in America have noted that the interpretive approach that became dominant early in the 19th century was strongly related to the democratic and pragmatic outlook of American society. The Bible could readily be interpreted by any reader – one didn’t need to be a professor or a professional clergyman.

Indeed, scriptural passages could be read as simple statements of fact. Creationism in the common sense is an example of this way of reading scripture.

However, scriptural interpretation is no longer thought to be so simple by most professional biblical scholars. In particular, the stories of Genesis are now thought to be products of a particular ancient culture that held different attitudes toward nature and history than our own.

Reading Genesis as history as we understand it may involve a distortion of its original meaning.

If so, then teaching creationism in schools isn’t just a matter of pushing a dubious approach to science. More fundamentally, it may be privileging one (questionable) approach to Scripture over others in public school education.

I don’t think we really want to go there.