Fortunately science is not a system of following along with whatever the mainstream flavor is.
I see you focused on my use of the word “mainstream”, so as to not have to respond to the real issue I was asking about. You say we all perform science in the same manner. Then why the clear diversity in what our scientific conclusions are?
Science is performed by observing, questioning, experimenting and integrating new knowledge.
I generally like this, and I note it includes no provisions for using a religious document as an ultimate and inviolable standard to measure against. And also, what is a scientist to do when the process you allude to clearly indicates that beliefs the scientist initially had are almost certainly wrong?
Science is no threat in the slightest.
What was the incentive for the Scopes trial in Tennessee some 90 years ago?
In fact..... science can be / should be another means of worshipping our Creator."
By “Creator” I think you mean some type of supreme intelligent entity that deliberately formed us. For me it is implicitly ludicrous to worship such, by science or any other way, since I don’t believe it exists.
Henry Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): said "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."
I can’t tell if Schaefer is thinking of God like Einstein did - in a metaphorical sense – or if he was expressing a typical feeling shared by many believers. (Nor do I see that it matters.)
Albert Einstein even seemed to think science was a form of worship even though he did not know who the Creator was. He said "One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality."
He also wrote, near the end of his life:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
Simply putting a white lab coat on does not suddenly turn the person into a blank slate.
Specifically, which is likely to be the closest to a “blank slate” – a scientist who is committed to following evidence wherever it leads, or a scientist who deeply feels that God’s Word is in direct opposition to common descent and a universe that is millions of years old?
Yes...some of them may be on the ultimate 'losing' team.
They are on the wrong side of scripture and science.
I will not contest your evident need to stand as judge of their in theological beliefs, but I am unimpressed by you using no more than assertion to contest their science.
There are also physicists, geologists, astronomers, biologists, geneticists etc who agree with scripture that God created everything in six literal days.
If those scientists you mention had no religious belief in a six-day creation, would they come to the same conclusions?
*Generally atheists and agnostics have a philosophical bias as expressed by*Professor Richard Lewontin,"...we have a priori commitment to materialism….”
With all due respect to Lewontin, I tend to side more with Stenger. If God turns a couple of loaves of bread into a feast for a crowd, then that is a clear creation of matter and energy – the stuff physics deals with. Bring it on, let’s figure how many kilograms of new matter showed up, how many calories of new energy we have. That info would be great data. So when that is going to happen – you know, God creating mass and/or energy right in front of a crowd, – will you let me know, and I will bring the instruments and video to record it and to document the actual measured values.
I also said there are some apostate or heretical who reject the gospel message of salvation. Rejection of Genesis sometimes leads to rejection of God's Word in its entirety.
I don’t think I will interject myself in that squabble any more than you would a squabble between two witch doctors.
Either I'm not understanding you...or, that claim is silly. I've often exchanged comments with you and others here how the complexity, sophistication, the language of DNA points to the Creator. We have discussed and argued about which competing view of various things better fits the Biblical young earth view, or the evolutionist old earth view (comets, origin of life, hominids and more)
When I first asked how you know that science supports God’s Word you soon jumped right in with a dissertation about the accuracy of New Testament archaeology. For a few posts since then you have been kinda waffling. But I can go with this – comets, origin of life, and such. I don’t recall that I have been involved (at TOL) in any significant discussions on comets. If you have some reasonably concise info on comets that you think is bullet-proof, then I would like to hear it.
But the way many of these exchanges end up is that each side has “experts” that dispute what the other side says. When that happens, is there any scientific way to move if off being a stalemate?
Well the thing is Davis.... if it was an evolutionist hiring for your mission to Mars; or, if it was a creationist.... they would hire the best scientists possible. They would want people who understand science...period.
I agree. But to use an extreme example to make my point more explicit, we see that one job applicant graduated with respectable grades from MIT, specializing in physics, whereas another applicant graduated from “Aunt Sally’s Homeschool of Hairstyling and Advanced Physics Theory”. Would that information have any bearing on which applicant you might prefer to hire?