Hello
@Jennifer Rothnie, Thanks for your response - Sorry for the piece-mealing of your posts, you've covered quite a lot and I find it disjointed addressing several paragraphs of Gish-Gallop with several paragraphs of response, so please bear with me...
#1. Not having the original manuscripts is only marginally relevant, as the manuscript copies we have are in over 99% agreement with each other, and variations are limited to such things as spelling differences, differing synonyms, word endings, minor grammatical differences, and sometimes an accidentally repeated line. While we do not have the original manuscripts, we can have extreme confidence that what we do have is very near to the contents of the originals - moreso than in any other ancient manuscript. We also have the ability to study the manuscripts in Greek and compare them - so anyone worried that an English translation is inferior can go check.
When you say little differences, they seem to be a little more than minor contrivances you mention there - for example, could you clear up the 'Begats' in the Bible from Adam to Jesus? Could you tell me in which order the Genesis account happened? Do you know who bought the Potter's Field after Jesus was crucified, and how Judas died? I'm sorry, but there's a cavalcade of texts in the bible that requires in-depth explanations that are themselves often contradictory to the other in-depth explanations offered by other believers... Also, I've always found it perplexing that the canonical Bible refers to so many non-canonical writings, why would a God have his official text referring to non-official texts so much, are they supposed to be included and God let them be lost by time, or are the divinely inspired biblical authors wrong to refer to them in the first place?
Furthermore, the scientific observations are filtered through 'fallible man' and experiments are conducted by 'fallible man' - over a far shorter time frame and with less corroboration than the writing of scripture! There is actually a huge problem in the sciences of 'science' taking a back-seat to big personalities or socially pushed theories. As a theory reaches the limits of scientists to test (equipment, finances, time, etc.) the scientific method begins to deteriorate as the theories move from slow, verifiable experiments to math-based models instead. Big personalities (Bill Nye, anyone?) become more important than objectivity, and research compromised as the scientists play to what is politically correct to get grant money rather than sticking to the purity of science, which should play no favorites.
The limits of science and the scientific method - ScienceDirect
Science has no 'Authorities' or 'Personalities' whose word has to be taken as gospel. Even Albert Einstein was challenged and proven wrong on scientific matters, particularly in the field of Quantum Mechanics. Nobody is ever taken to be an authority immune to question, no matter how popular or famous they might be. As many Science:101 classes begin on the scientific method, "No matter how attached to your theory you are, no matter how elegant a solution you have proposed to a problem, ultimately, in science, data rules all. If your idea doesn’t match the observations then it must be discarded. You can’t describe how the universe works if you don’t pay attention to what the universe is telling you.", so to say that everyone has the same facts, but interprets them differently is just false. Keep in mind that science has to account for ALL data, not just the ones cherrypicked to support a pre-conceived belief. Here's the kicker though, Scientists of all backgrounds, whether they be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Secular, etc. come to the same broad conclusions 99.9% of the time. Where anything in Science has become a theory, it's because it has survived the gauntlet of not only the original Scientist/s rigorously attempting to falsify the theory, but the peer review process invites every other Scientist to invalidate through the same testing regimes any way they can too.
I might agree with you that the Scientific Method is the worst method to come by the truth, except for all the other methods we've tried... As for the Bible, wasn't it written by anonymous fallible men, copied by more anonymous fallible men, interpreted and translated by other fallible men, only to be interpreted yet again by even more fallible men? At least Science acknowledges, addresses and minimises this human nature aspect.
#2 We can't directly examine all of the world around us and the universe. Scientists have discovered that this is actually an *impossibility* - as there are clear limits on what man can observe. Furthermore, we cannot measure 'everything in between' - we are even limited in what we can choose to observe. We can find out the location or velocity of a particle, for example - but not both. We also cannot go back in time to directly observe history, we can only make inferences about it based on current observation - those inferences clouded by any assumptions thrown into the mix, and limited by our lack of knowledge on every specific process potentially involved.
We can observe a surprisingly huge amount of the world around us and the universe, why would you say we can't? Everytime we swing a telescope to the stars, we're observing the past in real time. We can see 13.4 Billion years into the past, so you are factually incorrect on this point. At the other end of the scale, we can observe (for the want of a better word) sub-atomic quatum particles, and routinely do this at the speed of light. Also, Just as a Detective can solve a crime that happened in the past when nobody else was there, there are facts we can discern that show either something has to have happened, such as geological layers laid down over a long period in a very dry environment (salt layers, sulfide mineral layers and unoxidised metal rich rock forming before Earth's atmosphere was rich in oxygen), or likewise, make past events impossible (worldwide flood that bottlenecked all life forms to one (or 7/14) breeding pairs, or a young earth less than tens of thousands of years old, or individually created lifeforms, etc.)
Something observed can also have several potential explanations - simply observing doesn't 'prove' any one potential history over another without further data. [I remember a test question from middle school, where two photographs of a mountain were shown, and we were to choose the correct 'time' between the images. Since they were photos, I chose '100 yrs' since it was the only timeframe within the invention of the camera, inferring that it was likely an eruption that caused the difference. Yet the teacher marked my question 'wrong', claiming it was 10 million years of erosion, and that I was supposed to be looking at the change in the mountain and not the fact they were photos. She saw 'erosion' as the only possible explanation for an observed change. I noted several possible explanations, and used further data (availability of camera) to narrow them down.
I don't have enough information to assess this claim, but I'd be interested to see the question and pics as proposed to you.
Or, for a more general example, Darwin observed finch beaks 'changing over time' and interpreted it as natural selection guiding evolution. Creationists observe that there is no net change over the generations but the growth is cyclic. So, creationists interpret that as natural selection guiding normal genetic variation within a kind. The same observation - different interpretations. The observation itself doesn't 'prove' one without further data. In this case, we do now have further data Darwin did not - that variation in beak size is already present in their genes and not driven by mutations.]
This is a good example to my earlier statement about All of the facts, not just cherry-picked points. Yes, some of Darwin's Finches do still interbreed, and their beak sizes vary depending on the type and availability of foods (though these differences are NOT wholly contained in their genetic information, this is incorrect) - we can agree that these observations could support either conclusion absent any other evidence, however there are a number of Finch species that Don't interbreed, and in fact support Darwin's original claim, and that of Evolution in general. These points of fact CONTRADICT The Creationists standpoint and support Evolution only. This is what we'd expect from Evolution if it is correct, that is, speciation is a gradual process that takes many thousands, if not millions of generations to permeate. We can see this in the big Cats too, where some species of cats are able to hybridise (albeit producing mostly sterile offspring such as Ligers) and some cannot. Same with Horses and Donkeys. These are examples of latter speciation where they've been separated geographically or by sexual preference for so long that they'll eventually speciate proper, never to be the same species again. As it is, they already exhibit vastly different traits unique to their lineages. If they continue this trent then eventually, they'll never be able to produce offspring becoming their own species.
Ring species are another example of speciation, where Species A can reproduce with Species B, Species B can reproduce with Species C, and so on around some geographical ring or corridor until Species A meets Species Z at the other end, and the two Cannot reproduce at all! Herring gulls and Lesser Black-backed gulls are one such example, The Euphorbia tithymaloides is a plant species example that has done the same thing around a ring in Central America - where they meet back together in the Virgin Islands, they're ecologically & morphologically different & are unable to reproduce with each other locally even though they have a continually reproducing corridor all the way back around to each other... See
Ring species - Wikipedia for a primer.
Young Earth creationists and Old Earth creationists and evolutionists all use the same observations. What differs is their assumptions and interpretations that they filter the observations through.
I'm sorry, this just isn't so. As demonstrated, Creationists dishonestly set aside facts that contradict their pre-conceived conclusion. How does a young earth creationist explain 680,000 years of seasonal permafrost cycle layers? Why does radiometric carbon dating and several other radiometric dating techniques consistently correlate with non-radiometric dating methods such as Ice core layers, dendrochronology and lake varves? Why do ALL of these techniques correlate to real world catastrophic disasters, such as massive bushfires, meteor impacts and volcanic eruptions recorded by our own hand in history (Pompeii for example...)?
#3 There certainly are tangible benefits and advantages to having knowledge of the world around us. However, are they 'superior' benefits to knowledge of morality and God? Few would claim that a scientist who can explain every natural process known to man, but is a greedy serial killer, truly has the advantage over a grade-school educated farmer who abides by the law and shares his crop with the needy. As scripture says, 'what advantage is it for a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?' (Mk 8:36) Specifically to the topic of creationism/evolution, it is also important to note that there is no real 'advantage' to evolutionary theory over not. All useful medical and industrial advances have come from other scientific fields, such as chemistry and biology.
Sure there's 'advantage' to evolutionary theory over not! Haven't you ever had a seasonal flu shot? Do you know of the great many Scientists and Medical Researchers devoting their time to a cure for cancer? Stem cell research & Gene therapy for repairing organ failure & old age - then there's DNA testing to determine genetic relationships, such as paternal tests, and then we have Forensic DNA profiling which can tell us the ethnicity, sex and relationship of a suspect to their victim for example, we can tell the hair, skin and eye colour, along with the ethnicity of a person from their DNA, we can even see what genetic problems they have, and the likelihood of other diseases they're more susceptible to in life. All because of evolution!
#4 The scientific method is extremely useful, but it is not the 'best method in all cases,' nor the only method we can use in understanding the world. The scientific method cannot test or explain morality, sentience, love, God or a lack thereof, etc. It rarely comes into play in determining the guilt of an accused criminal. Also, more relevant to the topic, evolutionary theory does not use the scientific method as repeatable experiments are not feasible for all aspects, current observations do not directly support or disprove it, and it is not a falsifiable theory. Parts of it can be tested under the scientific method, such as tracking generations of bacteria to see if mutations arise, but the theory overall cannot. (In this way it is quite similar to creationism. Parts of the theory can be tested, such as flood sediment layering, but overall the theory is not falsifiable, repeatable experiments cannot be done on all aspects, and current observations do not directly prove or disprove it.)
The Scientific Method can indeed test and explain morality & sentience and even to an extent, love. God is the only thing the Scientific Method cannot test & explain, because that's the only thing that doesn't manifest in this universe in any way. If it did, then we could measure it. As discussed, the scientific method also wholly underpins Forensic Science too, the single most reliable form of evidence in a court of law. so it does indeed come into play in determining the guilt of an accused criminal. Why do you think EVERY crime scene is sectioned off & "Processed" by the Department's Crime Lab? Again, you are factually incorrect when you say that the Theory of Evolution isn't born of the scientific method. there are innumerable aspects of the Theory of Evolution that are tested in every way using the Scientific Method, perhaps you just haven't looked into it? We've used the Theory of Evolution to predict where we'd find various "missing Links" in the Fossil record, like Tiktaalik for example. Falsifiable tests for the Theory of Evolution are many and varied, all of which have already been tested, and are often repeatedly tested upholding the Theory with flying colours! For example, here are some things (and it is by no means an exhaustive list) that would disprove the Theory of Evolution: Finding a rabbit fossil (or ANY Mammal for that matter) in the pre-canbrian layer; Trilobyte fossils in the Jurassic period; Mammals with Feathers; Reptiles with Mammary Glands; a Dog giving birth to a Cat; Anything that doesn't correlate with the Nested Tree of Life, such as a Crockaduck (ERV Distribution fits into this category too); and so on. With so many things that could disprove Evolution, why hasn't any Creationist been able to demonstrate any one of these?