@thoughtful, I’m a woman. I read here regularly. I don’t post a lot because many of the threads get very technical in fields I don’t personally have expertise in, so I stay out and just read.
I’ve read Sanford’s Genetic Entropy book. He was lying in chapter 2 when talking about what Kimura would agree with. I read the paper cited. It did NOT back up Sanford’s arguments. And the patriarch graph toward the end was ridiculous and not something that should be coming from a credible scientist. It was bad enough that I would call it dishonest to use it as evidence of anything.
Other creation scientists have routinely lied. Dr. Snelling of AiG has an article about a folded rock that he says is evidence of a global flood because it folded without cracks. The picture with the article is blurry and has people in weird places in front of it. Elsewhere on the AiG website, you can see a better picture of that formation, and it clearly has cracks. Lots of them! The biggest ones are right behind where the people were standing in that photo. I emailed AiG to ask about it, and they gave a canned response and a circular argument that the cracks must have happened after folding during the flood. I find a better explanation of how that formation occured in the book The Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth.
I believe it was Snelling who also sent Mt. St. Helens rocks to a lab that said on their website that their equipment can’t date things less than 2 million years old, then Snelling said, “See! Radiometric dating doesn’t work!” That’s like weighing a feather on a truck scale and complaining that the scale isn’t accurate. You can’t misuse a tool and then say the tool doesn’t work. That’s being dishonest.
They’re not persecuting you for being a Christian. Don’t have a persecution complex. We Christians in the United States live a relatively persecution free existence right now. Unfortunately, mocking has become a national trend, done by all sides of every debate, and also done by our leaders, who sound like toddlers having a meltdown.
I’d recommend the book Reformed Theology and Evolutionary Theory by Gijsbert van den Brink. If you’re not reformed, that’s OK. The author is a theologian who holds a reformed stance, but much of what he says overlaps with non-reformed stances. I’m not reformed, and I’ve enjoyed the book quite a bit.
I’d also suggest John Walton’s books. Walton is conservative and takes the Bible seriously. He also is well versed in ancient Near East writings, so he talks about the cultural background of the Old Testament and how that can illuminate our reading of the text. There’s his Lost World of… series and also Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament.
Another book I’d recommend is A Worldview Approach to Science and Scripture by Carol Hill (a Christian geologist).
All of these authors take fairly conservative views of Scripture. None of them believe Genesis 1-11 are fables.
Why? What does that matter? There are a lot of things we don’t know scientifically. I have no problem saying, “I don’t know, but I know God is the author of it all.” Whether God snapped his metaphorical fingers and life began or He set up conditions on Earth knowing life would result using the natural processes He created, doesn’t matter to me. I can still say, “God did it.” If a scientist in a lab creates life in early earth like conditions one day, I’ll say, “Cool! Maybe that’s how God did it!” OOL research doesn’t in any way, shape, or form affect my faith or my belief in God as the creator. And I don’t think the ID version of God tinkering at certain points is necessary either. 
What’s wrong with God creating natural processes that do cool things naturally, like creating all life from a common ancestor?
I used to be YEC. When I left it, it opened my eyes to all the wonder of God’s creation that I’d previously had to say didn’t happen, because it didn’t fit with YEC view of things. I have a stronger faith now, and I have more awe for what God has done. 
