Science vs belief again

Hey Brandon,

Stephen and his family are staying with us for most of June, so I still may be slow to respond at times, even though things are much less hectic than this past weekend.  I want to spend as much time with them as possible, since we don’t often get to see them.

He thinks there is absolutely nothing that could convince you that you are wrong. He says that you are entirely too happy to come up with science that matches your theories rather than looking at evidence and coming up with theories based on that.

It’s really kind of funny—I could easily say the exact same thing about y’all...  :o)   But accusing  or belittling each other won’t do much to advance our conversation and our search for the truth.  I certainly don’t think that if I were to accuse you of being overly biased or closed minded, you would accept that as a valid defense of my position—it would probably anger you.  

The thing is that we both are often looking at the same evidence and coming to different conclusions.  You think your conclusions are correct, and I believe mine are.  Hopefully, we’ll eventually come to an agreement about something—but even if that doesn’t happen for a very long time, just the fact that we are discussing this is a good thing, an experience from which we’ll both learn.  I’m not concerned.  And I’m very much enjoying our discussion.

I therefore think that you must be building an extreme form of cognitive dissonance in your mind. This cognitive dissonance surely will lead to a coming-to-god moment where you see your own ideas contradict each other. I believe that happened with our conversation on entropy, and I believe it will happen again.

I have to disagree with you here—I’m experiencing no cognitive dissonance at all, because I see no contradiction between science and Biblical creation.  From my perspective, scientific evidence fits very well with the creationist viewpoint, and I believe that evolutionists have to jump through too many hoops in order to interpret the evidence in a way that fits their perspective. I think all the evidences I’ve provided so far fit much better with the creationist perspective than with Darwinian evolution.  I still think entropy is a very good evidence against evolution, and you have yet to explain scientifically how evolution can overcome entropy.  Dawkins seems to assume that evolution is true and makes little effort to provide a logical basis for his assumption—he merely interprets evidence from an evolutionary perspective and belittles those who disagree, which isn’t much of an argument.

You can, though, prove with a mountain of evidence to the fullest extent that anything can be proved scientifically that evolution did in fact occur. With equal rigor but much less effort can one prove that the earth is certainly not, not, not 10,000 years old.

Again, I have to disagree with you.  Neither of us will ever be able to account for all the unknowns in either perspective, but in my mind, scientific data—the evidence that scientists have observed—fit much better with Biblical creation.   If you can scientifically prove that the earth is very old, then do so and explain to me how my evidences for a young earth are invalid—tell me why there isn’t more salt in the oceans, how the earth managed to stay in the proper orbit for life to exist, and so on.   

you'll bring up a scientific tool (like carbon dating, or any other atomic clock, or fossil strata), and then you'll say that there has been at least one instance where this tool gave an incorrect result (such as scientists having gotten a date wrong or one instance where the strata were upside down). Just because something fails once doesn't mean that it doesn't work.

You’re quite correct that a single failure doesn’t necessarily mean anything—it could just be an outlier.  On the other hand, when a particular scientific tool, such as the K-Ar dating method, is found to be faulty a number of times, one has to consider the possibility that something is wrong—basic assumptions may be wrong (such as assuming no Ar in newly formed rock, as Dawkins did), the data may be being misinterpreted, or there may be other unknown factors affecting the tool.  I can give you a list of a number of relatively recent rock formations which were incorrectly dated by the usual methods used by evolutionists.  I mentioned only Mt. St. Helens because it is most well known and has been extensively studied.

Over the course of our discussion, I’ve gone overboard in using secular sources to support my positions.   The book I sent you is supported by  mostly secular research.  I’m trying to do everything possible to be as objective as possible and to let the data speak for itself.   Even the book’s author was a respected scientist in his field, not just “some Christian nutcase working for a creationist think tank”, and he started off accepting evolution as truth—he has looked at the evidence from both sides.   

In an earlier letter, you admitted that if fossils could be found in the wrong layer, it would be a good evidence against evolution. (Even Dawkins said this.)  So, here are several examples of fossils found in wrong layers, either earlier or later than the time expected by evolutionists.  However, rather than accepting that these fossils could be evidence against evolution (and for creation), the scientists  involved simply adjusted their interpretation of the fossil finds in order to make them fit with evolution.  
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/09/17/tiny.t-rex.dinosaur.discovered  “Tiny T-rex Fossil Discovery Startles Scientists”  In this article, the T-rex fossil was found at a much lower (older) level than expected.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/teeth-of-tyrannosaurus-ancestor-datingback-140-mil-years-found-in-hyogo  This is similar to the find in the above article.
Van Roy, P. et al. 2010. Ordovician faunas of Burgess Shale type. Nature. 465 (7295): 215-218. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7295/full/nature09038.html (if you don’t have access at school, you’d have to pay to read the whole article)  While this article interprets this find from an evolutionary perspective, it’s still a case of a fossil found at the wrong level (simple organisms were found at a much more recent age than expected).

One of the claims of the book is that the lower or more ancient strata contain fossils of much simpler plants (and no complex plants!) and the higher or more recent strata contain much more complicated fossilized structures in plants. The book is then able to date the evolution of the first trees to about 365 million years ago. It seems to me that you have two choices: 1) you don't believe the evidence that the book claims, that is you don't believe that there is strata of dirt across the globe where the lower layers have simpler plants (of course you could check it yourself), or 2) you agree that this is powerful evidence of evolution of plants!

I do have another choice.  Yes, there are strata of dirt where lower layers generally have simpler plants (this is the data), but my interpretation of these layers would be different.  An evolutionist would say that these layers were deposited over long periods of time, with lower layers containing much simpler plants and higher layers containing more complex plants that had evolved from the earlier plants.  A creationist would say that the various layers were deposited during the flood year, and in the time after the flood as the waters receded. A creationist would say that all the different kinds of plants/animals existed from the very beginning (with relatively minor variations of adaptation), but they ended up in different layers due to factors such as flood conditions, ability to float, or ability to live longer in water.  It’s natural for smaller, weaker organisms to be drowned and/or settle to the bottom first—these would end up in the lower layers.  (if you’ve ever noticed how rocks sort out in water, you’ll see that the sand settles underneath the larger pebbles and rocks)  The larger, stronger, more complex creatures would be able to survive in the floodwaters longer before finally getting stuck in a higher layer.  Some plants, such as trees, might even float on the surface for quite awhile before finally sinking and being embedded in an even higher layer.    This is another example of how the same data (layers with different types of organisms) can be interpreted in different ways.  How would you prove the evolutionist interpretation of the data?  

(Somewhere I’ve read that pollen grains were found in layers below where they should have been from an evolutionary perspective—this would be another example of fossils in the wrong layer.  This could easily happen in a flood situation, with smaller pollen being deposited in lower layers of silt. When I get a chance I’ll try to find the article again. )

Okay, this is enough for this letter, and I need to get some sleep. :)

Susan