...which brings me to the one biggest thing I don't understand about creationism: why the most religiously conservative among us seem unconcerned about getting their facts straight or misrepresenting the truth. They apparently have so much faith in the honesty and accuracy of each other that they can't believe they would ever lie or be mistaken, so if they hear from a Christian source something negative about evolution, then they'll believe it forever and forever, no matter how much factual information is actually presented to them.
Scientists work from evidence, and construct theories to explain that evidence.
Creationists do not do this. They work from belief, and fit the evidence into that belief.
If something scientists come up with contradicts their belief, we must be wrong. They may not know how we are wrong (many know little about science), but they know we are wrong. For this reason no amount of evidence that we might present will make any difference.
That's where the "what if" stories come in. When presented with a scientific fact that seems to contradict their religious beliefs (for example, that radiometric dating shows an old earth) a logical response to them would be "What if radiometric dating is wrong?" or "What if the decay constant was different in the past?"
When presented with evidence that contradicts these what ifs, they simply come with another what if because their belief supersedes any scientific evidence or theory. Again, they may not know how science is wrong, they just know that it is and the exact details don't much matter.
At least that's they way it seems to me from several years of debating creationists on the web.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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