Science, as practiced by many today, is rooted in naturalism, which excludes supernatural acts like creation. The debate is not between science and creationism but rather between competing worldviews—one that denies miracles and one that acknowledges God as the Creator.
Creationism holds that the universe and everything in it, including Adam and Eve, were created by God as described in Genesis 1 . This is in stark contrast to methodological naturalism, which limits scientific explanations to natural phenomena and excludes any supernatural act, such as creation. So the naturalistic view of many scientists is that the universe created itself, that life somehow arose from non-life, and that Darwinian evolution explains how life came to be as we see it today. Hence, creationists accept supernatural explanations, while secular scientists reject supernatural acts and try to explain everything in terms of physical laws.
However, miracles and supernatural acts have not been refuted by science. There are no logically valid reasons to reject creationism in favor of naturalism, as the scientific community has done. Creationism does not inhibit discovery, since many of the developers of the scientific method were Christians. The controversy is not between science and creationism. It is between faith in one position or another. The real question, then, is, which faith is the most reasonable?
The basic issue of not believing in supernatural miracles, especially the creation of the universe, goes back at least to David Hume, an eighteenth century Scottish philosopher. Hume argued that miracles are violations of the laws of nature, so we could never believe in miracles unless the evidence were even more miraculous than the miracle itself. Although Hume's argument is a popular justification to reject belief in miracles, there is no logical reason to accept his argument. Even the well-known atheist Anthony Flew concluded that Hume was wrong.
While some scientists assert that science and supernatural creation clash, that is really not the case according to Oxford mathematician John Lennox. If there is a God who created the universe and has it running on certain recognizable laws, He’s not constrained by them. He can insert a new, special event, and our knowledge of the laws will help us recognize that event as a miracle. In opposition to secular scientists, many scientists in the field of Intelligent Design theory do accept supernatural miracles as valid explanations. Like other cultural battles we see today, the popular science media often distorts research results to maintain a standard story.