Evolution Facts

[Esquilax]

the scientific community has earned that trust, where the religious one has not.

Says you. Creationists would point to scientific predictions 40 years ago that we were entering another ice age versus scientific warnings now about global warning. Were they lying then, or are they lying now?

I would say that there's more options than just lying/not lying. They were just wrong before, but at least they were wrong based on the evidence they had at the time. There's no shame in being retroactively wrong when new information comes to light; the fact that creationists might require that scientists be perfectly right all the time or completely invalid only shows their willingness to demand unreasonable standards from everyone who might disagree with them.

It's also telling that those same creationists will still trust the scientific community insofar as it benefits them. Their special pleading is what makes this argument unconvincing.

You would answer that those very reversals prove that science is open and religion is closed. He would laugh. I on the other hand, would simply advise care in being absolutely certain of anything...

Here we agree: absolute certainty is a childish thing to profess, outside of a few very basic things.

...and THAT'S perilously close to being a reverse argument from authority, isn't it? If Ken Ham says the sun rose in the east yesterday, he might actually have a point.

Okay, let me rephrase, I was being quick to save time. It's very similar to Ham's "observational/historical science" nonsense, or his "were you there?" question, the idea that you have no strong basis to believe a claim unless you directly observed it. I hope I don't have to explain why that's a problematic stance to take for a logically consistent human being.