This response essentially sums up Helen's poisition:
Response to Helen
from gallo
Just smoke, Helen.
It is known that the ice layers represent annual snows down to a certain level. There is nothing that distinguishes the layers below that from the ones above. So your conclusion is that since it isn't known for sure, it is reasonable to assume that the ice layers are somehow formed differently because your Bible tells you so. At any rate, the story invented to make the mythology of the Bible seem reasonable requires that you claim different causes.
There is no evidence that the ice layers going down for several thousand years were formed for any other reasons than those we know to be in effect today. To assume, without evidence, that any other cause is reasonable, is irrational at best. "It cudda been" isn't science, Helen. Besides, I doubt that you can cram 100,000 storms into 4000 years. Your whole story is nothing more than imagination.
What Helen has done, is taken the ice core data, her world view (that the bible is correct) and tried to explain the ice core data based on her world view. She makes up any and all possible explanations as required to show that the ice core data doesn't contradict her view.
That is not how science works. Science takes the evidence, and tries to come up with the most likely explanation for why the evidence is the way it is. The best explanations will have facets that can be tested - either by taking the same general model to other examples and see if those examples fit the model, or by predicting how the outcome of events that have not yet been witnessed will occur.
It seems to me that you are saying that science has decided that evolution is the correct answer, and so now is interpreting evidence to support the theory. In much the same way that Helen has decided that creationism and the bible is the correct answer, and so now is interpreting evidence to support that theory.
But science DOES NOT do that. So saying "science says this, religion says that, I choose religion" is really comparing apples to oranges. To sum it up in the same terms, science has *established* this, while religion *says* that. If religion and science were using the same "take a position, then argue the evidence to fit your position" methodology, then sure, there'd be no reason to choose science over religion, and probably choosing religion would make more sense. But science fundamentally does not work in that fashion. I think that is a trap that a lot of christians trying to argue against science fall into, thinking that science is really no more arbitrary than their beloved bible, and since both ways of explaining the world appear to have the same logic behind them, they'll take the bible's view.
The methodology that science follows is completely at odds with the methodology that religion uses. History has shown that as scientific data becomes more and more difficult to argue against, religion capitulates and cedes ground, trying to find the next bastion that science is required to attack and explain. This is obvious in my story of Copernicus above - now the church readily acknowledges that we live in a heliocentric universe, but it didn't used to. Similarly with evolution, religious people have accepted that actually natural selection exists on a small scale, but they don't believe in speciation.
None.