In response to Dr. Rana’s critique of the book.
He writes,
But what about the question of origins? Given the descriptions of God’s creative work in the creation accounts, it looks as if God intervened in a direct, personal way when it comes to the origin of the universe and the origin and history of life—including humanity’s genesis. If so, then methodological naturalism serves as a questionable guide to certain scientific questions, because it insists that all origin events must have mechanistic causes—even if they do not.
This was perhaps to be expected, along with a few book plugs which were in there. There is certainly nothing testable about the RTB creation model as it pits their model against a strawman model of naturalism (Review: Origins of Life | National Center for Science Education). Also this, despite the claims otherwise is a god of the gaps type of argument. In other words, as was posted on BioLogos’ social media feed maybe a week ago:
To these we can ask, is our Christian Creed “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of only those parts of nature that seemed like God tinkered with them or that we cannot explain yet via science?”
He is either the Creator of heaven and Earth (all of it) or none of it. And you’ve done well to identify the redefinition of methodological naturalism along with his incorrect use of science to pit modern science against the resurrection. I will have to look at your MN article in more detail, while also providing one submitted to ASA titled ‘A Defense of Methodological Naturalism’ by Kathryn Applegate - http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2013/PSCF3-13Applegate.pdf. Kathryn does an excellent job showing how those at the discovery institute and others have redefined and perhaps misunderstood methodological naturalism.
It was also to expected that Rana attack the the population estimates, hinting and suggesting that one day we will find a bottleneck of just two people. Actually, according to RTB, all species should show a severe bottleneck of just two species starting every population on Earth. The paper he cites in his article, Is genetic diversity really higher in large populations? - PMC, is an interesting paper which has an abstract that proposes:
…variation in the rate of mutation rather than in population size is the main explanation for variations in mtDNA diversity observed among bird species.
In other words, this one paper is provided to suggest population size has little to do with genetic diversity and @DennisVenema 's argument is no good. Here’s a larger paper which has been cited about 15 times as much from the same year: Revisiting an Old Riddle: What Determines Genetic Diversity Levels within Species? that is a much broader picture of what factors determine genetic diversity. A more recent 2016 paper looks at some lizards and concludes that (Does population size affect genetic diversity? A test with sympatric lizard species | Heredity) - emphasis mine:
Taken together, our data are consistent with neutral models that predict a relationship between genetic diversity and population size. Alternative evolutionary forces have been proposed as major drivers of differences in population genetic diversity, for example recurrent selection and ‘genetic draft’ (Smith and Haigh, 1974; Gillespie, 2001; Bazin et al., 2006). Although we cannot rule out the importance of other such forces, our data are predominantly consistent with the predictions of neutral theory. Ultimately, no one study can validate the generality of a relationship between genetic diversity and population size.
Cherry picking phrases from papers, casting doubt on scientific ideas, and subtely suggesting that it means that your model of 2 people supernaturally created some 50,000 years ago is a YEC tactic (except in their case there’s the mitochondrial eve that 6,000 years old and mitochondrial Adam that’s 4,000 years old) and I hope for better than these tactics.