Well then, instead of speaking to me, you should be responding to Sky Writing, because that is exactly what he was arguing.
Well, this is what SW wrote:
Science has no place discussing history. Science can only make predictions about future events. Mainly, experiments that can be conducted by a skeptical investigator. If a skeptical investigator is unable to recreate an event under controlled conditions, then the truth seeker is unable to use the scientific method to illuminate the facts.
He was in error to make the statement that 'Science can only make predictions about future events'. However, his explanation doesn't seem to relegate what he is really trying to say applies only to future events.
Right. Miracles are beyond the explanatory power of science. I would never argue with that.
Yes, but you believe that science has given an answer to the miracle of creation. As I see it, if one really believes that science can't give answers to miracles, then science can't tell me the when and how of the creation as it was probably the greatest miraculous event in this realm. They are simply making guesses based on what they believe are valid methods of measurement that they then believe are providing them valid answers to these things.
Let me ask you a couple of questions: Do you believe the earth existed before the sun? Do you believe that plant life was created before the sun?
As long as no miracle interfered with the evidence, they can. And as far as I know, scripture speaks of no miracle interfering with the type of evidence that tells us how old most things are. Caliminian often notes that the good wine served at the wedding at Cana would lead those who tasted it to think it was old when it was not. But scripture also tells us in this case that the wine was produced miraculously. But if we had a wineskin from that wedding, I expect carbon dating would tell us how old it was.
Yes, but the Scriptures seem fairly clear that they do interfere with these things of which you claim they don't. Why would you expect that carbon dating would tell you how old the wine was. God may well, just as I believe He did with the earth, created the wine as it needed to be to be good wine. If, out of that necessity God infused that wine with molecules that would, under testing make it have the same qualities as old wine, then why wouldn't we expect carbon dating to date it older than it was. After all, carbon dating only measures the residual manner of an item. What if, in order that the wine taste as good wine it would need to have the properties of old wine, yet be brand new? In other words the yeast would have had to have fermented and so, despite the fact that the wine were brand new, under testing it would show the residuals of fermented yeast.
I agree, no one can explain the miracles of God, but let us not invent miracles to be explanations when natural explanations suffice. I am not willing to believe the measured ages are not true unless I have testimony (as with the wine at the wedding at Cana) that a miracle is the actual explanation.
I don't see that as what I am doing. I don't think I have invented any miracles. I just believe that when God miraculously creates things that those things will have properties that under man's methods of testing will look old. The story I use for this is Adam. I believe that there was a singular man by the name of Adam, after all God cried out, "Adam, where art thou?" and this singular man answered Him. I believe that on the day Adam was created from the dust of the ground that his body was fully formed and had all the attributes that we today see in fully formed human beings.
Yet, if Adam had died 1 week after he was created and there was a forensic pathologist with all the measuring tools and knowledge that we have today there to perform an autopsy on his body. That pathologist would list Adam as at least a couple of decades old. Certainly enough years to have him be a fully grown man. Even though the pathologist uses the best techniques of measurement that we have available to us today, he would have come up wrong in his judgment of Adam's age.
I see this same principle in the creation.
You misunderstand the meaning of ages measured by science. In a sense, all rocks were created on the same day. But since that day, various rocks have had various histories. When the rocks of earth were first created, they were all in a molten state and gradually cooled. This gives us the dates of the earliest rocks--if we could find any. But those rocks no longer exist on earth, as far as we know. First, most of them eroded, creating sedimentary layers. Later sedimentary layers were subjected to heat, pressure, vulcanism, etc. which generated metamorphosed rocks and igneous rocks of a younger date than the creation date. Then these were also worn down to sediment--and some of this new sediment repressurized or vulcanized into still younger metamorphic and igneous rock.
I don't think that I do, but you are free to understand me as you see fit.
So we still get various ages of various rocks, because dating only goes back to the last time the rock went through a cycle of being molten--not back to the rock as originally created. So all of these dates would be after the original creation date.
Fine, but as you stated at the outset, history is not one of those limitations. There is such a thing as scientific history.