Do not underestimate the fear in YEC communities as they see their children leaving the faith when they go to college. YEC parents I know are intentionally exposing their children to GAE for the purpose of protecting their faith if they abandon YEC.
It eases their concerns by showing they can protect everything think is valuable, even if the earth is old. Very few YECs take 6000 yo earth as a grounding concern, but as an affirmation that protects other things. They often leave YEC when they see there are better ways to protect the things they really care about.
Will this comfort Ken Ham? No. It will likely make him very upset.
Then at this point, do you even have a hypothesis at all? If there is no observable difference at all, even in principle, then your hypothesis isn’t even wrong. Actually, it’s not even unfalsifiable. In fact, it’s meaningless. You’re merely adding theological words to a description of a natural process which make no empirical nor even theological difference.
In contrast, when we say that A&E were created de novo, we probably mean some or all of the following things:
They did not have human parents which shared their genetic material.
They were created as adults.
They came into being instantaneously.
If a hypothetical observer was around to see the process, they would see Adam being formed “out of the dust” and appearing full-formed (perhaps similar to some movie descriptions).
In other words, DNC of A&E is in principle observable, if someone was around to see it in the Garden of Eden 6-20 kya. The problem is that no one has a record of that event if it happened, so in that sense it is practically unfalsifiable.
Sure. But not all of them have reconciled evolution with A&E, and might not have decided whether to follow Tim Keller or Dennis Lamoureux.
As Josh said, many YECs are not committed to that by itself. Opposition to science is often rooted in some deeper issues - such as perceived theological consequences.
Ah, I see. So you are not really concerned with persuading creationists to accept evolution, so much as you are with making sure they remain Christians if and when they do.
Amen! I wish that principle would be applied generally across the range of “origins” discussions. The idea that the onus is on doubters to prove a negative is wrong, in science or any other intellectual endeavor.
If arming the next generation with a way to render Christian faith and Evolutionary science as mutually compatible is not preferable to you than just leaving all Creationists as hostile to science … then there is not much that will please you.