I start with the biblical texts as having ultimate authority. Thereafter I try, albeit weakly, to judge other propositions and evidence in light of the same. WRT propositions like a 4.5 billion year old earth, I don't believe it just because a bunch of people and books say so, and I am not qualified at this point to do my own testing. Thus I'll leave it an open case unless or until I am convinced of evidence to the contrary.
You apparently believe the philosophy of evolutionism to be a closed case even though you have not done the testing and examination yourself. At this point I'd like to ask why you consider that to be "science."
Everything in science is based on what has gone before. Current knowledge is based on not only the specific field under study but from many other contributory fields of study. What you are suggesting is that unless each and every scientist reproduce the prior experiments before getting to his own area of interest, they are not practicing science. This is unnecessary, counter productive and downright silly.
This requirement of reproducing all prior tests before accepting the results shows that your interest is not in defining what science is, but in creating a definition of science that would necessarily preclude evolution from being considered such. Instead of trying to twist the definition of science to enable you to outright dismiss evolution as a science, use the definition scientists actually use in every day work. Their definition does not demand direct observation exclusively but allows indirect observation to be used.
Just for information sake, do you consider the 2 slit experiment, direct or indirect observation?
If your definition of science with its artificial constraints enables you to feel comfortable with your religion, so be it. If however you insist on spreading your false definition as fact you are baldly prevaricating.
But there are other possibilities. You can examine the *reasoning* and decide whether it is correct without actually repeating the experiments yourself. Then you have to decide if those doing the actual measurements from which the reasoning is derived are lying about what they found. I suppose every mainstream physicist, geologist, astronomer, paleontologist, cosmologist, geneticist, biologist etc could be engaged in a giant conspiracy to fake their results to match the experimental predictions of an old earth with common descent of all biological life but I don't have to duplicate all their results to reject that; I know that a 200 year global conspiracy on that scale could never be maintained.
A demand on your part that all prior results be personally repeated before they can be believed suggests to me that in your heart you know where rational consideration of the physical evidence leads, and you don't like it, so you rationalise an excuse for rejecting the evidence.
For example rational consideration of the observations from SN1987A shows us that
a. It is more than 100,000 light years away (established geometrically)
b. Light-speed has been constant since it left SN1987A
c. Nuclear decay-rates have been constant since SN1987A exploded
I don't have to repeat the measurements of the angle subtended by the gas-rings and the time delay between the main event and their illumination and the decay curve of the gas-cloud myself. I trust that the scientists making those observations aren't conspiring to defraud me (a conspiracy that would bring no scientist any benefit whatsoever)