Coyoteman,
As I read the many who are wrangling with you on this creation vs. evolution issue, I find most of them are saying what I would say anyway. I think we can largely say it all hinges on what “experts” and “scientists” we decide we want to believe.
For example, the radiometric and radiocarbon dating. There is a great debate as to its accuracy. You trust those who say it’s accurate. I trust those who say it’s not. I’ve certainly never done any experiments about it myself. I lack the ability and the equipment.
Of course I must be willing to look at your links, but I will willingly confess I lack the scientific knowledge to interpret all the data. That’s why I lean on the high school level knowledge I do have, along with better educated minds than mine who put forth their findings AND their interpretations of them.
It’s the interpretations of the data that we disagree on.
For example, you say, “It is interpreted differently by those who can’t accept what the data are saying for religious reasons.” I could say the same about those who hold on doggedly to evolutionary theory! See, the knife cuts both ways.
I see evolutionary theory as “trying to put a square peg in a round hole.” Desperate to deny that God is their Creator and Sustainer, and that we are wholly dependent on and subservient to Him, mankind invents fantastic theories which make us autonomous, self-reliant, the way we want to be. Certainly there is data that can fit into the theory of evolution, as long as you interpret it with an evolutionary presupposition.
Your statement about penguins and your aching back are prognostications, of course, and no one on this thread will live long enough to see if it’s true. My opinion is, the penguins will still be the same. I don’t believe our ancestors crawled on all fours, so we have backaches now, any more than I believe occasional headaches mean we used to have helmets grafted on which we’ve since shed.
So you and I can acknowledge backaches, and headaches, and differently shaped skulls, and dino fossils, and yet come to radically different conclusions.
As you say, “Better be careful, as the creationist sources have a nasty habit of misrepresenting science to make it come out the way they want. They will omit inconvenient facts, distort what they can omit, and overall do the type of science one would expect from comic books.” Well, I might say the evolutionist sources do the same thing. Remember Piltdown Man and Lucy, etc. etc. etc.? Quite disingenous. And I’ve had plenty of evolutionary theory in comic book/picture book format. One of my fave books as a child had tremendous dino drawings, no men around of course, telling me repeatedly “. . . many million years ago. . .”
You mention you are the field of archeology. Does the fact that all archeological discoveries so far have coincided with Biblical detail affect your opinion of the veracity of the Bible at all? I am an enthusiastic reader of Biblical Archeological Review.
Bottom line, when all charts are read and experiments concluded, I can not believe that the indescribable design elements I see displayed in everything from a simple cell to the human eye are all the products of millions of years of mutation and genetic selection. That notion is, to me, preposterous. I have read, for instance, in regard to the human eye, that there would need to be over ten million successful, positive mutations in order to get near it.
And that’s just an eyeball of one species.
Piltdown man was a fraud committed by a religious person and widely doubted by the scientific community. When scientific methods improved, the 'Man' was pulled out of storage and determined by the scientific methods you disdain to be a fraud.
No dispute in the scientific community that it shows the earth much older than 6,000 years. Here you are fighting not only the evolutionists but the geologists and physicists. Are you willing to throw away all of science?
NO archeological discovery has supported the biblical detail of the "great flood".
I also read BAR on occasion, and have a large collection of back issues.
Perhaps the largest archaeologically testable prediction made by the bible has not been supported by archaeology -- a global flood at about 4350 years ago.
From just my own work: there are a number of sites which I have tested which contain Native American cultures spanning this time period. My dating is based largely on radiocarbon, but that actually has been shown to be pretty accurate. You may choose not to accept the evidence, but both dating of historical materials (for example, materials of a known age from ancient Egypt) and of tree-rings (which can be counted individually) shows the method works.
Anyway, if you are arguing from faith and belief, rather than from scientific data, there is nothing that could convince you otherwise, so I will bid you good day.