Quote Originally Posted by Kralizec View Post
I'm not extremely well versed in scientific philosophy, but I'll give it a shot.

You mentioned the naturalistic axiom somewhere, i.e. the world can be explained and understould in terms of cause and effect without resorting to metaphysical explanations. This axiom is one of the cornerstones of science- while creationists argue that many things, in particular the existence of mankind, can't be explained in purely physical causes and effect and that you have to resort to divine intervention to make sense of anything. That's what demarcates science from non-science. (and I am aware that axioms are unprovable) It's not unscientific to question the theory of evolution, adhering to theories that contradict scientific axioms is.
More generally, creationists challenge any method used to falsify their derived claims (like that the Earth is 6.000 year old, thus carbon dating has to be false). People may try to formulate their ideas about creation such that they sound objective, but ultimately won't ever accept that their claims have been proven false.

Theistic evolution stands or falls with "regular" evolution and isn't logically inconsistent, but the claim that "God did it" is still non-scientific precisely because it relies on metaphysical explanations.
If I understand correctly you are making a demarcation criterion based on a certain metaphysical axiom (i.e: naturalism among many). Is this correct?

If so then I would certainly agree with you that this is a much better demarcation than say a naive testability or falsification. I gave this and another criterion based on the consensus of the scientific community as alternatives to the testable/falsifiable distinction.

Of course there remain problems with such an attempt (I nuanced it to avoid the charge of blatant circularity that a scientific theory is one that relies on the scientific axiom) and it may not eliminate all forms of "psuedoscience" but I feel that alternative criteria like these are the much sounder way to go, as opposed to what is generally argued in court cases today (relying on the testability/falsifiability criteria).

One day, should the creationist lobby not botch the case badly and get a guy who can argue convincingly against this usually used but fatally flawed demarcation principle, it would be an embarrassment for evolutionary biology...

This is an journal article from Science, Technology, and Human Values following up on a certain court decision on creationism a while back that talks about this issue pretty concisely and convincingly:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/688928

(might not be viewable in public domain)