Hi again Steve,

You are quite correct that I am a long way from the "Young Earth" creationists, those who hold to a 24 hour creation day, precisely because of the problem you just raised (and because that is not what scripture says). In order for the "Young Earth" people to be correct they are forced to conclude that God created the world with what they term, "the appearance of age." In other words, they must assert that God deceived people, and as a Christian I reject any theory that casts God as a deceiver.

As for the age of the universe, high energy physicists place the age at 10^32 to 10^33 years based on their observations. The last time I read anything about it they were conducting an experiment (I believe it was called ISIS, but I could be wrong so don't quote me) to try and observe a proton decay. As I recall (again, a suspect standard), they expected to observe a proton decay within a few years if the age was closer to 10^32 years. I suspect you are confusing the age of our solar system with the age of the universe. Even our galaxy is far more than billions of years old.

You also raise another good point, that only faith can account for the existence of a benevolent creator God. Science can not. From a secular perspective you need only to read Kurt Godel's 1934 article, "On formally undecidable propositions of the Principia Mathematica and related systems," (the German publication Monatschafte fur Mathematik und Physik, but don't hold me to the spelling) to find this proven mathematically. Of course, the same article also proves that science will never be able to disprove God (as you had already concluded independantly).

My only point about evolution is not whether it did or did not occur. My point is that if you do an objective quantitative analysis you must conclude that natural selection is insufficient, not sufficient, to account for evolution if the mutations are random. You will find that the average time necessary for an average species to evolve from its directly antecedent species, if left to random mutations and natural selection, is astronomically many times the age of the whole universe (not just our galaxy, solar system and/or planet). And that's only for one step in a whole evolutionary sequence which gets us from primordial ooze to rocket science. The problem becomes even more intractible when you consider the number of steps necessary for any single higher order species to have evolved into existence (parallel chains notwithstanding).

In the end it is important to understand that no corporeal reason can prove God. There is certainly no impetus to conclude that the discriminating influence required for evolution to account for our world is necessarily a benevolent creator. But as a scientist you absolutely must recognize that what is being suggested by random mutation and natural selection can not withstand scrutiny. You can choose to attribute this "discriminating force" to something heretofore unknown, to be discovered in the future, but if you insist on holding to the mantra of random mutations directed only by natural selection, then you have just traded one scientifically untenable belief for another.