Many people believe that scientists use special methods that place scientific work on a plane different from other human endeavors. Scientific work reflects an empirical (relying upon or gained from experiment or observation) approach to learning about the world. One feature of empirical data that researchers use is public (or external) rather than private (or internal). This means that other people can verify the facts that scientists use. In contrast, other areas of intellectual life are usually considered to lie outside the empirical realm. Mathematics, music, and sports, for example, are valuable parts of our lives that are not part of the empirical world of science.

History of Scientific Thought
Humans existed for 1000"s of years without science. During this time the world was generally regarded as the stage for supernatural forces. Myths and religious ideas explained the natural world. Earthquake and floods, for example, were often viewed as expressions of divine wrath in response to human transgressions.

Several Greek theorists, most notably Aristotle (384-322 BCE) offered a different style of explanation for the events in the natural world. Aristotle taught that explanations of the natural world should be limited to those that could be verified by the facts of experience.

But problems arose quickly between Science and the Church because they approached understanding of the world from two completely different perspectives. Science assumes efficient causes, that is causality linked to an immediately preceding event that has a direct effect - a method, if you will. For example, if your roommate gets angry and throws a book on the floor, you will hear a loud thump and may jump from your chair. Or because gold particles are denser than other geologic materials, gold nuggets accumulate in the bottom of a stream while other, less dense, particles are washed away. The Church, on the other hand, relies on a system of beliefs that are not testable or susceptible to challenge.

Presently, there is considerable debate between Creationism and Science on the origin of the earth and all of its inhabitants. It is important to understand some fundamental differences between these two schools of thinking. The way each side collect and process information to generate what they know, how they know it, and the limits to their knowledge is very different. The creationist is unequivocally committed to textual content, namely the literal meaning of Biblical Genesis, and disbelieves anything that contradicts that content. Science, by contrast, is committed to a method, namely drawing logical inferences from reproducible observations. Whereas scientists will revise current content if the results of the method so dictate, the creationist has no method and simply relies on an inerrant text (Leo Laporte, 1998, GSA TODAY).

Our Current Attitudes
Today most of use assume a scientific framework of thought in regard to the world around us. When someone asks, "What causes the common cold?" or "Why did Los Angeles have another earthquake?" That person is usually looking for answers that appeal to the regularities of the natural world that we all can observe. Similarly, if an elderly man suffers from chest pains and goes to a doctor, he expects the doctor to perform tests and look for efficient causes of the pain. We would think it absurd of the doctor explained the pains with reference to supernatural forces.

Those of us living in the modern world want a system of analysis that will allow us to go further and further toward understanding natural phenomena. For better or worse, we live in a technological age, and we have surrounded ourselves with a culture shaped by scientific thought. This is hardly surprising when we remember that explaining a phenomenon by referring it to a Supreme Being allows us to explain everything in a similar manner. For example,

A Supreme Being decided to give Los Angeles an earthquake this morning.
A Supreme Being has sent the HIV virus as a punishment for sexual transgressions.
A Supreme Being made my sister rich but made me good looking.

These explanations are logically acceptable as far as they go, but they cannot go any further. Speculating about why a Supreme Being chose this, rather than that, is beyond us. So we never learn anything deeper about these issues.

How does the Scientific Method work?
The basis for the scientific method is the belief that the universe is orderly and that by objectively analyzing phenomena, we can discover its working. It proceeds as follows:

1. A question or problem is raised.

2. Available information pertinent to the question or problem is collected and analyzed. Facts, which are called data are gathered.

3. After the data have been analyzed, tentative explanations or solutions, called hypothesis are proposed.

4. One predicts what would occur in given situations if a hypothesis were correct.

5. Predictions are tested, incorrect hypotheses are discarded.

6. A hypothesis that passes the testing becomes a theory, which is regarded as having an excellent chance of being true. In science, however, nothing is considered proven absolutely. All theories remain open to scrutiny, further testing and refinement.