MattC, I’m afraid that, while this is an often-repeated and much-loved claim, it simply isn’t true.
Young Earth Creationists do NOT “use the same scientific evidence and interpret it differently.” They simply dismiss any evidence which they cannot reconcile with their predetermined conclusion of a young Earth and a global Flood.
Thus, when the much-vaunted RATE Project encountered a tiny problem with their rapid-decay model–namely, that their own calculations indicated that the excess heat would melt the planet’s crust and kill every living thing–they concluded that, since they couldn’t possibly be wrong, God must have taken the heat away through some unknown, possibly miraculous mechanism.
That’s not “interpreting the evidence differently.” That’s hand-waving the evidence. And that’s what Young Earth Creationists do constantly. Millions of pollen-clay varve couplets? Dismissed with vague comments about turbidity during the Flood. Polystrate fossils with their rootlet systems intact and growing through many layers of “Flood sediment?” Typically outright ignored.
I have never heard any Young Earth Creationist offer any explanation of the correspondence between oxygen isotope ratios in ocean core samples and the orbital eccentricity predicted by the Milankovich Cycle.
Heck: I’ve never heard any Young Earth Creationist explain why (winged) pterosaurs are consistently buried much deeper than sloths, or why dolphins and icthyosaurs are always buried at vastly different depths. The usual explanations certainly don’t work for THAT one–dolphins and icthyosaurs occupied the same habitat, had the same inability to escape the Flood, and had nearly-identical hydrological profiles.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 tells us to test all things and hold fast to that which is good. While this was written specifically in reference to prophetic pronouncements, I think it’s quite safe to say that it applies whenever someone claims to be speaking for God’s “plain meaning.”
Young Earth Creationist claims routinely fail to stand up to the test.