There is a problem with his challenge. To summarize, Godlessons asks for creationist experiments in the regular scientific mold – hypothesis, experimental test and conclusion. This does not describe all scientific work. In historical sciences, like paleontology or stratigraphy, the ‘test’ of a hypothesis is usually not experimental. Personally I’m not too impressed with the word ‘test’, since it implies that the work done after formulating a hypothesis is intended to decide if the hypothesis is true, when often this is not the case. ‘Articulation’, as Thomas Kuhn calls it, is just as often the practical goal of scientific work.

But creationism is a historical field, regardless of the question if it is an actual field of science. Therefore it might be difficult to find creationist experiments, especially since young-earth creationists (YECs) reject uniformitarianism, or the idea that the present is the key to the past. In the YEC view, the so-called ‘flood geology’, conditions during the flood were so radically different and so influenced by God that normal geological methods cannot describe them. This means that experiments aimed at understanding sedimentology or structural geology better are discarded by YECs. But only, ofcourse, if they seem to falsify the flood geology itself. YECs have no problem accepting experiments that support their position.

Setting aside flood geology, I do think there is a branch of creationism that can be, and has been, tested. It is the kind of creationism that is touched on by the creationist poster boy at the introduction of the video: ‘All we see are variations within the kinds’. It is common for creationists to emphasise the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution, distort its role in evolutionary science, and then claim that one is acceptable while the other isn’t. This particular paradigm, of variation only happening within kinds or basic types, is open to testing and even more to articulation. What is a ‘kind’? If you can find work by a creationist that seeks to define ‘kind’ in a scientific way, you could be on your way to collecting an amazon gift voucher from Godlessons.

In 1982, German creationist Siegfried Scherer co-authored a paper called Hybridisierung und Verwandtschaftsgrade innerhalb der Anatidae – eine systematische und volutionstheoretische Betrachtung in the Journal of Ornithology. This paper tests the idea of ‘basic types’ by researching the known hybrids of ducks. The conclusion is that hybrid ducks exhibit traits that are outside their normal cladistic groups and that therefore, they are not descended from a more primitive duck, but from a species of duck that carried the full variation displayed by recent species.

The point here is not that this paper is the definitive tie-breaker between creationism and evolution, or even that creationism is science. What I would like to stress is that the paradigm of ‘basic types’, ‘kinds’ or ‘created species’ within which ‘microevolution can happen’ is a possible generator of scientifically testable hypotheses. And like any paradigm, results of the tests might reject a part of the paradigm, but most normal research will not result in the paradigm itself being challenged. This is true of all normal science. If Godlessons’ aim is to find test-based creationism, I’ve given him one direction to find it.

Alas, the challenge discriminates between ‘creationists’ and ‘atheists’ (as ridiculous a dichotomy as I ever saw) and it appears I’m not eligible for any prize. Professor Scherer might be, but I don’t think he is going to bother with posting a video. He doesn’t like being associated with creationism too much anyway – as far as I can see Scherer is not a YEC and even distanced himself from the Discovery Institute. It will be very difficult for any youtube creationist to perform hybridisation experiments on ducks, and nobody’s going to do it for one chance at a $50 prize.

My suggestion is probably not the most useful for Godlessons. What Scherer’s work shows, however, is that parts of creationism can behave like science, which might inspire a few youtube talking heads. I hope the challenge achieves that.