Here’s my take on “science first or Bible first.” It’s a sneak preview of a blog post that I’ve got scheduled to go live tomorrow morning:
Young earth creationists often tell me that science must fit Scripture, and not the other way around. That’s fair enough, but fitting science to Scripture means first and foremost that it must be honest in the way that it handles weights and measures (e.g. Deuteronomy 25:13; Proverbs 11:1). It must be free from arithmetic error. It must not fudge or cherry-pick the raw data. It must neither exaggerate nor downplay the significance of uncertainties and discordances. It must not take shortcuts. It must verify its integrity by testing against controls where appropriate. It must not misrepresent the extent or nature of the evidence. It must not quote mine. And it must not be resistant to reasonable critique.
These are basic rules of honesty and quality control. To break them in order to “fit Scripture” is neither scriptural nor scientific.
Basically, I go Bible first, but not in the way that YECs expect.
Just remember that accelerated nuclear decay is not in the Bible. Neither is catastrophic plate tectonics, the anisotropic synchrony convention, dinosaurs on the Ark, hyper-rapid post-Flood speciation, a 200 year post-Flood ice age, the idea that Adam “began to die,” a vapour canopy, a decaying speed of light, or the omphalos hypothesis. But on the other hand, “a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day” is.
There’s a lot more of “man’s fallible wisdom” in YEC than they care to admit.