justforfun, I did not take the time (which I don't have right now) to read the essay, so I will concentrate on your first post.
We all base what we conclude about things upon presuppositions we think are true. Those presuppositions are the foundation I was talking about.
You have presuppositions you feel are foundational to everything else. So do I. From what I have understood of your posts, your presuppositions have to do with man's ability to solve the riddles of nature and the cosmos. You feel confident that the way science is headed is the right one, that we all evolved, etc.
I have a different foundation. You see, I started out an evolutionist, believing as you did in both man's abilities and in evolution.
I did not change because of the Bible. I changed because of basic data -- evidence. For me the primary evidence was in the field of population genetics, but cellular genetics and basic biology also backed up what I started discovering when I finally had the time, after university and starting marriage and a career of teaching, to read peer-reviewed journals and other science magazines and start to catch up with what was going on 'out there'.
Out of curiosity I started to check out some of those lunatic creationists to see how far out of it they were. They challenged some of the things I thought were true. So I did some more research. In the course of five years I discovered enough to radically change my point of view, even though I fought against that change at first.
One of the things I found out, but not at the beginning of that time, was that the Bible had some interesting scientific statements in it. And of those which could be checked, they were all true, whether or not we figured the people who had written them down could have possibly known about them.
IF God is real, and IF He created the universe, and the earth, and life, then He would know the truth of it all. If not, then man's mind is all we have, and that is a pretty sad state of affairs, really!
But when I found the Bible was right in what could be checked, I started taking more of the scientific side of it seriously. Were plants and animals created according to kind or did they evolve? It was one or the other.
Extant evidence favors the former despite the fact that evolution declares the latter. But the evidence seems to side with the Bible.
And that is what I have learned to count on. The Bible truly does give us the parameters of scientific truth. All living creation was created as original populations and variation has occurred from that point. We have no evidence of one sort of organism evolving into another sort of organism -- variation within kind, yes; out of kind, no. That is the evidence we have.
Just like the Bible indicated.
So for me, and for many like me, the foundation to true science lies in the statements God has caused to be made in His Word.
If you had read my earlier posts or been here longer, you would know that I have been a science editor and peer reviewer. You would know that I am often disgusted with both sides of the creation/evolution argument because they do what you falsely accused me of doing: cramming selected data in to fit pre-existing theories.
I am not doing that. What I am doing, however, is stating that all of the data I have seen, when taken out of the evolutionary presupposition/conclusion context is actually more supportive of biblical creation. That is what took me those five years to realize. And I am still willing to look at any data you have with a very open mind, because I know I am a faulty and limited human being and that I have tons of learning to do.
But in my short 56 years of life on this earth, I have learned a little. I have learned, primarily, that I can trust God. With my life, my loved ones, and with the data of creation. He did not create things one way and then lie about them in His Word. True science does, indeed, agree with the Bible.
Science is knowledge. It is not, however, the wisdom to know what to do with that knowledge. Wisdom comes from God.
When you said that science was simply objective discovering, without beliefs involved, you were being incredibly naive. No scientist in the world -- no adult person in the world -- goes about seeing things without interpreting them through what he or she already believes to be true. There is no possible way to divorce the scientist from his beliefs.
I have put my beliefs, through which I now see the data, on the foundation of God. You have put yours, through which you see the very same data, on the foundation of man.
Both of us cannot be right. I know God, and I also know man. I would venture to say you only know man. So I guess that is what you are stuck with.