But it is so much fun to imagine that all of the world’s physicists somehow overlooked these “obvious” problems----but a group of evolution-denying entrepreneurs and their followers who just happen to share very similar religious beliefs just happened to figure out what the PhD experts who’ve spent lifetimes studying radiometrics couldn’t. What an ego-boosting experience!
Yes, when I was a Young Earth Creationist who was a fan of creation science, it was a real rush telling myself that I was actually a better scientist than those real scientists who spent many years trudging through all of those tedious textbooks and laboratory procedures!
Yet, the Bible explained my problem: the sin nature within me grasped tightly at anything which stoked my pride. I loved it when my favorite pastors and guest speakers (e.g., Duane Gish, and the Moody Science Films shown on Saturday nights at my church) told me that because I was a child of God, I was personally acquainted with the Creator of the universe and the Holy Spirit delivered “special revelation” to me that was not available to those “godless scientists”. Thus, I didn’t need to spend years studying the physics. I didn’t need to look at the evidence. God had given me a shortcut because I was special! (And everybody who managed to believe the exact same things as my church was also special qualified for that “bypass” to the science education process.) I couldn’t seem to find a Bible proof-text describing this divinely-imparted science knowledge, but it surely must be in there someplace in the scriptures or Drs. Gish and Morris wouldn’t say so that dogmatically! (After all, are you saying that you are smarter than Dr. Gish and Dr. Morris? Of course not! And seeing how their doctrinal positions were very similar to mine, it just wasn’t possible that God would allow them to teach anything from the pulpit at my church which was contrary to Biblical truth and the realities of the scientific world.)
Of course, that divinely-imparted shortcut was also explained as the reason why “creation science” didn’t have to go through the peer-review process. It was a direct revelation from God. (Of course, why Gish, Morris, and various other YEC speakers could never seem to all get their stories straight so that they all taught the exact same things was never explained. But at least they all agreed that “The scientists are all wrong and we are 100% right!” And when I pointed out such logic contradictions to my pastor and friends, they all agreed “You are thinking too hard! You must live by faith, not by sight.”)
Yes, it is fun to imagine that I know better than all of the physics professors at all of the world’s top universities. (Even though I realized that I wasn’t qualified to teach grad-level physics at a university, I nevertheless thought I knew enough to claim that the Theory of Evolution defied that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and that radiometric dating was hopelessly flawed. Apparently my divinely revealed superiority in science was narrowly restricted to particular bombastic claims. The details must not have been important to God and to my ministry or else God would have imparted in me a more complete science education.)
Yes. I’m thankful that really good, Genuine True Christians™ can rest assured that they have a big advantage over those brainy scientists who obviously hate God and who are plotting a world-wide conspiracy to embrace an old earth and a long history of evolutionary processes. God obviously authored both the universe and the Bible but somehow man’s fallibility renders his interpretations of the evidence found in the universe invalid—but there’s one segment of the Church which escapes those fallibility problems when it comes to interpreting the evidence found in the Bible. (Thus, beware: God’s Bible is trustworthy, but God’s Creation is not. So only pay attention to the former and not the latter. Sort of. It depends on whether you are a good enough Genuine True Christians™ who learned his/her science correctly from the witness of the Holy Spirit. So many of the born-again, Evangelical Christians in the sciences—even Dr. Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project—should learn their science from Gish, Morris, Ken Ham and other Genuine True Christians™ despite their lack of relevant science training.)