I feel like we are talking past each other.
I've been saying from the beginning that the just objection of those that have doubts about the idea of the evolution of all things, including human beings, is NOT against science in general, but against the assumptions and conclusions of what is popular in science today.
When you refer to the stability of the laws of nature, I certainly agree that they are stable to our observation today. I complain about the assumption that there can be no variables that would alter the calculations and conclusions. And I do NOT say that the variable is a "going wrong"; if God began a process, that would be a turning point, the process acted on by an external Force, and it would be going right, not wrong. The person who simply continued following a calculation past that point (into an imaginary past) would be in error, though a quite understandable one.
I understand that ideas can be persuasive, but a persuasive idea can still be wrong. And that is my point - that the evidence is being INTERPRETED via assumptions and calculations. I accept the evidence. I think it can be interpreted wrongly. In the justice system it is called circumstantial evidence. It may be right - coincidentally. But it may be a drastically wrong interpretation. Just because the silhouette in my earlier example LOOKS like a murder in progress does not make it so. The curtain and light behind it are real, as are the shadows. It is the interpretation that can prove wrong, even radically, though understandably so.
And so, we may examine theories. I say that our danger is in forgetting that the theory is a theory, that it is in treating a theory like an unquestionable fact. It is not that the theory is untenable; it is that we are condemned for questioning it, and for continuing to doubt even after we have received the answers. It is a reversal of what our attitudes should be towards faith and the sciences, respectively. We are now expected to doubt our faith, but never, ever, to doubt the scientist, the new priest of our time.
And with that, I think I have largely answered the comments on Chesterton as well. The tests are still subject to interpretation of evidence based in assumptions. And that will still apply, no matter HOW many bones you find.
I have not even begun to defend the idea of special creation of man by God - as man, and not amoeba; the rejection of human evolution (and I do reject it). My only concern hitherto has been the rejection of the idea that Christians who doubt modern popular science are necessarily unreasonable; that ideas such as intelligent design CAN be intelligently held, despite the furious ridicule heaped on them by "the scientific community", (really only a percentage of vocal scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking) mostly enemies of faith.
