What is a real explanation? We are so used to dumbed-down “explanations” we hardly know what a real explanation is anymore. A real explanation describes all the causes of something. These were divided by Aristotle into four kinds of causes: the material, efficient, formal, and final causes.
The early scientific movement of Galileo, Bacon, etc. divided these causes into two groups: the material and efficient causes and the formal and final causes. They considered the former group the province of the book of nature and the latter group the province of scripture or metaphysics. Modern science focused on the former group and left the latter group to others or just ignored it.
Creationists criticize the so-called Enlightenment but haven’t realized how much it was the outgrowth of the modern scientific movement. Since the Enlightenment the material and efficient causes have been considered sufficient to explain something. Nature was substituted for creation and partial explanations were substituted for full explanations. This is the mantra of modern science today: we can explain everything without reference to teleology or intelligent design or God.
Creationists haven’t fully realized that they are trying to put all the causes back together, and put the books of nature and scripture back together, and find full explanations for the natural world, which is the world created by God.
So creationists today are not modern scientists. Though they seem not to realize it, they are trying to return science to the search for full explanations.
December 2013