Science, Faith, and the Classroom

This excerpt of an essay in the New York Times makes me nervous:

The chairman of the school board, Dr. Steve Abrams, a veterinarian, is not merely a strict creationist. He has openly stated that he believes that God created the universe 6,500 years ago, although he was quoted in The New York Times this month as saying that his personal faith “doesn’t have anything to do with science.”

“I can separate them,” he continued, adding, “My personal views of Scripture have no room in the science classroom.”

"A key concern should not be whether Dr. Abrams’s religious views have a place in the classroom, but rather how someone whose religious views require a denial of essentially all modern scientific knowledge can be chairman of a state school board."

The argument is that Science tells us the Earth must be very old. Dr. Abrams believes the Earth is only 6,500 years old. Therefore Dr. Abrams doesn't believe in science at all, as is seen in this quote:

It is a matter of overwhelming scientific evidence. To maintain a belief in a 6,000-year-old earth requires a denial of essentially all the results of modern physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology and geology. It is to imply that airplanes and automobiles work by divine magic, rather than by empirically testable laws.

My problem is that "all the results of modern physics, etc." only say how the Earth appeared to come about. They cannot say, nor can anything, whether the Earth could have been created, ex nihlo with laws in place that made it look very old. To say that combining a hydrocarbon with oxygen and heat today proves the Universe must be more than 6,500 years old is false. It does show that current scientific analysis works in a reliable way, but it is not absolute proof.

I lean towards the Old Earth / Science origin story. I still believe that God, as a super-natural being created it all. But I would not be surprised if God said one day "it really was just 6,500 years old. I made it that way." I believe God could do that, but as I look at the Universe, I use the assumption (because, no matter how many formulas, proofs, and tests are applied, I simply was not there) that it is really, really old.

What Dr. Abrams does is seperate science, as a way of investigating the visible world, which appears very, very old; from his faith that says "no matter how old it appears, it is only 6,500 years old." It is not a separation I care to make in this case, but neither do I find it impossible to think.