Genesis 1-11 doesn’t agree with science and science is objective and factual so how do I reconcile the two?
In the world of science, many people believe all scientists are just as you have stated, objective and deal only with the facts. Things like speculation and anticipation are accepted in the science community, but what else makes its way into the mind of the scientist; a lifetime of presuppositional thinking? Scientists come into all situations, just like anyone of us, with a set of preconceived thoughts and ideas about how something is or should be.
Let me give you an example, radiometric dating is a dating method that many scientist use to date the age of matter that was once living. This method is often given credit for giving scientist ages in the millions and billions of years. When we look closer at this method we begin to see the multiple assumptions that are brought into establish the millions of years and the problems this can create.
When using radiometric dating, scientists make three assumptions:
1. Know starting amount of radiation.
2. Closed system, in that there hasn’t been any outside influences to interfere with the radiation decay.
3. Rate of decay is constant.
These assumptions can neither be proven nor disproved. This is so because of the nature of the evaluation being made. The evaluation is being made based upon something that happened in the past. This is called historical science. Historical science makes assumptions about the past and then these assumptions are placed into the radiometric dating equation and out come millions of years. If you are looking for and expecting millions of years then that is what you will get.
In order for science to make authoritative statements about its dating methods, it must be able to prove these claims. These claims cannot be empirically verified yet they are given as proven facts. Scientist makes bold claims, as fact, about the age of a bone or the age of the universe and all of this is done without eyewitness accounts, only assumptions.
Further, we see that when radiometric dating gives dates that are out of what was anticipated (presupposition thinking) those dates are discarded and the process continues until the date anticipated or at least willing to be accepted, is given.
In an article from Answers In Genesis, they give the following example.
‘Bad’ dates
When a ‘date’ differs from that expected, researchers readily invent excuses for rejecting the result. The common application of such posterior reasoning shows that radiometric dating has serious problems. Woodmorappe cites hundreds of examples of excuses used to explain ‘bad’ dates.9
For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils.10 Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing strata give dates of about 23 Ma (Mega annum, million years) by the argon-argon method. The authors decided that was ‘too old,’ according to their beliefs about the place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand scheme of things. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia today.
As you see from this quote, science does not firmly stand upon objectivity and strictly factual information. They make claims on presuppositional thinking. These claims are made in faith, not fact.
The Bible makes authoritative claims too. It identifies itself as an authoritative book about the history of mankind. It opens with God revealing Himself as the Creator of everything and the Bible closes with God claiming His children and bringing them to heaven for eternity. The Bible is a book of the history of the world with the focus being upon who God is, the relationship between God and man, man’s plight in life, and how man can become reconnected with God.
The Bible gives us something that science does not and never can by itself, an eyewitness and an authority. Science makes assumptions about what happened in the past, the Bible gives us the One that was there in the beginning; God.
Do the Bible and science conflict? Yes, there are times they do, but conflicts are born out of man attempting to understand the world in which he lives without consulting the authority of the Bible first. When a scientist first trusts God and the authority of His Word, we then see science gracefully supporting and confirming the truths of the Bible.
Following is a brief list of some of the past and modern day scientists who have accepted the creation account as outlined in Genesis.
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) Bacteriology, Biochemistry; Sterilization; Immunization
James Joule (1818–1889) Thermodynamics
Samuel F.B. Morse (1791–1872) Telegraph
Isaac Newton (1642–1727) Dynamics; Calculus; Gravitation law; Reflecting telescope; Spectrum of light (wrote more about the Bible than science, and emphatically affirmed a Creator.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) Scientific method.
Dr. John Baumgardner, Electrical Engineering, Space Physicist, Geophysicist, expert in supercomputer modeling of plate tectonics
Dr. Steve Austin, Geologist
Dr. Don DeYoung, Astronomy, atmospheric physics, M.Div
Dr. David Menton, Anatomist
Dr. Terry Mortenson, History of Geology