I think we're pretty much on the same page. This is speaking from our reaction to what the Bible says.
Unfortunately, there exists a group who insist that the Bible actually teaches Darwinism — Barbarian among them. That's not too far removed from the type — Thomas Jefferson included — who might teach that the resurrection is not taught in the Bible.
I was unaware that The Barbarian believes the Bible "teaches" Darwinism. To me, the order of creation in Genesis chapter one rules out that Scripture teaches it.
I consider those who believe in the Resurrection of Christ as categorically different from everybody who does not, and yes, that does mean that all those Christians who believe in Darwinism are on the right side of things, all things eternal considered.
While I think I can appreciate the threat to faith in Christ that Darwinism presents, I believe that the unending reminder of His Resurrection (in the Mass and particularly in the Eucharist) is a sufficient emollient for that disease, and can and does keep it in check---among Catholics. Outside of Catholicism, it could very well be very much 'up for grabs.'
They simply ignore what is plainly written and assert their own agenda.
With the exception of faithful Catholics, who in order to be faithful Catholics, must also maintain that "He is risen" is to be taken as literally as you and I already take "six days." So Catholics who believe Darwinism are no threat to the Christian faith (i.e., primarily faith in Christ's Resurrection).
This makes for an impossible conversation. We can't look at the same text and derive the same meaning from simple words. It becomes a game of who can draw on the higher authority or claim the most support — ie, a debate over nonsense.
I draw something from the lack of any Apostolic addition to the creation account in Genesis. afaik, they said nothing more about creation. To me, this fact bolsters the idea that the Resurrection of Christ and everything that proceeds from that nonfiction historical event is categorically more important than whatever we believe about the origin of everything.
I don't know much about the Catholic stuff. However, science doesn't care about the idea; it only cares whether it is testable and falsifiable.
I think my "science" is more expansive. Science is the application of logic to propositions that are either facts or fictional. Whatever procedure results in us successfully sifting facts from the fictional is science.
The scientific method involves observation and hypothesis, and an hypothesis is a proposition. The logical implications of the proposition suggests possible experiments. And certainly, as you allude to, carefully (competently) designed and executed experiments can deny hypotheses, which is the same as confirming that the proposition is fictional /false.
And you're also correct that confirming an hypothesis does not prove it is factual, it could be that the experiment instead confirms a different hypothesis /proposition, due to factors beyond the control or recognition or measurement of the experimenters, or due to the experiment being too limited in scope (such as experiments confirming Newtonian hypotheses that are denied when taking into account astronomical and Planck scales).
So you can assert a miracle, which isn't either of those and is rightly rejected as a scientific theory, but the effects of a miracle can be tested and falsified.
So if I assert that God made the universe, that is a claim of faith. However, I can point to evidence to say that the universe was created.
A fine distinction, to be sure, but vital in a free and rational discussion.
There's nothing beyond science about a miracle. That a miracle occurred is a proposition that is either true or false, and science through the application of logic to this proposition suggests certain definite and testable things, but in the case of a miracle, like creation, or like the Resurrection of Christ, part of the evidence is direct observation of witnesses to the miracle. In the case of creation, there was nobody to witness it, since Adam was made on the sixth day, after everything else had already been made. But with the Resurrection of Christ, there were hundreds of witnesses, who saw Him alive, who saw Him dead, and who then saw Him after He rose from the dead.
What I want to explore is thinking through modern science and how nice it would be if we had had all sorts of scientific instruments there in the tomb (the Holy Sepulcher), at the moment that He arose. Of course this is an impossibility, but the pattern there is logical and can be applied to the only miracle that ever occurred that has left an undisputedly lasting impact upon the world, and that is the creation of the world itself.
What I see modern science saying, in spite of the basic assumption being that there are "ghosts" called "billion of years" involved, is that it "appears as if" God, "billions of years ago," set in motion the universe, and that through "billions of years," and mechanics /physical laws, we have the world as it is today.
You and I reject that ghosts like billion of years were involved, but I think we diverge from each other in thinking that "it looks like" "billions of years" were involved. And I think further that Had modern science gotten a 'heads up' about Christ's Resurrection, and could have measured and monitored and inspected and observed that blessed event as it actually occurred, that they too would have to say something along the lines of, "It looks like billions of years ago, Christ's Resurrection was set in motion to occur at this exact moment, through a congruence and confluence of an astonishing number of events that all converged to that moment," or something like this.
And that's what I take from the atheistic investigation into cosmology, that it established a pattern for all the miracles that ever occurred. The miracle isn't even that mechanics and the laws of physics all converged at a precise moment to bring about the miracle, the miracle is that this occurred while a person was predicting that it would occur just then. It looked like someone performing a miracle, iow. It did not look like what modern science is saying it looked like, like that "billions of years" converged to a moment in time. Through the investigation of modern science, we know what modern science would say about every miracle, iow. The conception of Christ e.g., would look like it was "billions of years" in the making, but that it all happened in a moment. The "billions of years" is what modern science would say that it took for the instantaneous miracle to occur, but since the miracle occurred instantaneously and not after "billions of years," we know that that proposition is false.
It's regrettable that the Darwinists can't even respect a simple definition for "information," let alone engage over foundational philosophy.
I'm OK with people inventing new homonyms, just so long as we can clarify which homonym they're using.
