What is needed for creationists to connect evidence to valid conclusions

I think you are confused about "formal sciences". It isn't the formal sciences that gave you televisions and computers, though they may have given you the software you run on those computers. A lot of modern medicine is derived from evolutionary biology.

I have never heard of a scientist saying anything like that.Let's put it this way. If a budding young university scientist acted in this way, then when his tenure review came up, he would find himself with a notice of dismissal. If a scientist submitted something like this to a science journal, it would never pass peer review.I'm glad to see that you question things, and don't just accept them without examination. But you really should start questioning the nonsense you have been given about science. It's unfortunate, but some of the leadership of the creationist community are deliberately telling lies about science and about evolution. They present to you a completely bogus and absurd account of evolution, so that they can ridicule it and make it look absurd. The question you raised about eyelids in Did Eyelids Evolve? was a good question, but it is a question that could only come from somebody who has been given badly confused version of evolution.Welcome to evcforum. We are glad to have you here. We hope you can make it a good learning experience.

I think it a mistake to refer to the responses as "snide remarks". They didn't look that way to me. But perhaps they were not written in a way that was easy for you to understand. I think there are now some better (more detailed) responses, which I hope you have found helpful.

There is no risk to your soul.Unfortunately, you seem to be a member of a man-made cult, invented in America in the 20th century. The Wiki entry gives a date of around 1961 for the invention of this cult by Henry Morris and others. Before that time, people had no difficulty with evolutionary biology. For example, C.S. Lewis, much admired and often referenced by evangelical Christians, was a theistic evolutionist. That is, he saw evolution as God's way of design living things in this world.As a child, I attended what I considered to be an evangelical church. That was before the invention of the Young Earth Creationism cult, and we had no difficulty accepting science. Being born and raised in Australia, I was familiar with kangaroos, wallabies, quokkas, echidnas, platypus, koalas and other exotic animals. It was pretty obvious to all that none of these exotic animals had ever been on Noah's ark. We took the view that the flood was a localized flood, that perhaps flooded the world known to the people of that era. Some people took the Genesis creation stories as allegorical, and some people took the days of Genesis 1 as eras rather than days. Nobody in our church questioned that the earth was old - as Australians we celebrated the age and the fact that the age was apparent in the flora and fauna of Australia. Nobody suggested that we were trading our souls by recognizing what was obvious - that the earth was old.I am greatly troubled that so many American children are being indoctrinated into this 20th century cult. They are being told deliberate lies about science and scientists. They are being taught a strawman version of evolution, so that evolution can be ridiculed. The leadership of the creationist cult seems to have found how to use this indoctrination as a form of mind control, to dissuade people from thinking for themselves and examining the science for themselves. I consider what they are doing to be dishonest, and clearly immoral. What they are doing is not the Christianity that I learned as a child.

Then there is no reason to object to evolution. There are many Christians who are evolutionists, and who believe that God created. We oppose teaching ID as science, when it clearly is not science. We oppose the dishonesty of it masqerading as science. I once believed that Christians were opposed to dishonesty, but now they seem to be promoting it. There is nothing anti-God in evolution. The theory of evolution does not mention God, just as physics does not mention God. Both are compatible with their being a God. No, it is science, not religion. No, it says nothing about religion. They oppose ID being taught in the science class, because it is not science.The people promoting ID are not doing the kind of research that would be needed if ID is ever to become a science. And even if it did become a science, the normal thing is for new sciences to first be introduced in graduate school, later into the undergraduate program, and finally (after it becomes a fully fledged and widely accepted science) into the high schools.So what do we have with ID? We have a pretence of science. We have the use of politics in an attempt to force this into the schools against the best scientific judgement. We have, in short, a deliberate effort to force religion into the science class where it does not belong. This is wrong. This is dishonest. This is unChristian.

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Let's end the political smears

Can you document that? If correct, then most of the scientists I know would sure want to do something about that. Then I wonder what is the real version of ID (if there is one).I have certainly read some of Dembski's work. I have read Behe's 1996 book. The claims that this is science are being ridiculed because they are ridiculous.The ID proponents had an opportunity to give their best account at the Dover trial. What they presented was ridiculous, and this shows up clearly in reports of the trial. Surely you are not suggesting that the ID proponents presented only a strawman version of their own ideas at the Dover trial? Sorry, but that makes no sense. If it were correct, it would be the kind of scandal that the news media love to cover. There would be a series of exposes on television news programs all over the nation.

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Let's end the political smears

Obviously, they are using induction and gross extrapolation.I have argued against both in other threads. I didn't get much support. According to the convention wisdom, science advances by such methods. It is clear from these earlier discussions, that most scientists here accept the conventional wisdom, or at least that they are unwilling to challenge it and will criticize attempts to challenge it.Science doesn't work the way that scientific epistemology says it works. It doesn't work the way many scientists think it works. The traditions of epistemology originated at a much earlier era, a time when creationist thinking was dominant. Roughly speaking, epistemology is an account of how science would work if creationism were correct. As long as traditional epistemology remains the conventional wisdom as to how science works, you will see the kind of thinking that bothers you.

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Let's end the political smears