Don't want the thread to get stale  :)  SO here are some more thoughts.

As we all employ a variety of methods to test the truth and merit of propositions, the prime distinction between us, as argued above, is that folks like myself are not so willing to dismiss the validity of a 'fact' gained through, say, historical inquiry.   There are at least two underlying assumptions beneath the attitude that elevates 'scientific' facts over others.  The first is the most important:

1.  It is argued that methodological naturalism is a required default for scientific inquiry.

I don't agree on a number of levels.  For one thing, methodological naturalism often morphs seemlessly into philosophical naturalism in the explication of many alleged 'scientific facts.'  Clearly, eliminating explanatory options from the beginning of the inquiry is going to result in only some of the options getting a fair hearing.  You can't imagine a police detective coming to the scene where a dead body lies deliberately refusing to even consider the possibility that it was homicide.  Nor is it compatible with forensic science to preclude the possibility of pre-meditation.  In fact, forensic sciences are often used to try to determine if an intelligent agent is behind a death.  If a detective refused to even consider the possibility that a person was murdered, do we think he could come up with a way to explain the knife sticking out of the back without allowing for the possibility of murder?  Sure.  (The movie "Final Destination" is an imaginative play on such possibilities.    ).  Would that mean he has generated a true account of the person's death?  Hardly.

As an explicit experimentalist, my view implicitly requires an orderly universe, and that might be described as 'methodological naturalism' but in neither case is the fact that the universe is orderly to begin with require further 'explanation.'  Newton, for example, in his Principia, attributed the order of the universe to God, but he would have been just as successful if he had not made any attribution, either to God, or to anything else.

This is an important point.  Many people point to perceived monumental scientific successes as reason for elevating science as a mechanism for learning about the world, but experimentally speaking, where the tire hits the road, these successes rest on an orderliness of the universe, the source of which is irrelevant to generating those successes.  I'm sure this is a point we'll return to.

2.  To return to the police detective forming an explanation for a man's death, if say for example he has a knife in his back, without reference to intelligent causes, it should be clear that merely providing 'explanations' does not necessarily mean you have anything close to a true explanation.

As studies involved in research into the 'anthropic principle,' largely a SECULAR area of research, make clear, the universe bears marks of orderliness that defy statistical conceptions.  According to these, the universe is apparently not set up arbitrarily.  Where did these 'tweaks' come from?  Isn't 'God' a plausible possibility?  But the philosophical naturalist eliminates 'God' from even being considered, under the view that this would be in defiance of the scientific method.  In light of the ability for other views to 'explain' the data (no matter how tortured the statistics are in those matters), it is believed that 'God' would be an unnecessary conclusion.

But that would be a bit like asking us to believe that positing a murderer is unnecessary just because a police detective can imagine how, given enough time, a knife fell out of a cabinet, landed in a toaster, which was depressed by the weight, then flung out, bounced onto a trampoline (we can't find the trampoline, but we know it HAD to be there), hurtled into the air, deflected off of a tree limb, and plunged into the back of a passerby.  Given enough time, anything that's possible must happen, right?  That's what Harry said in response to my anthropic principle arguments, and the above scenario IS possible.   However, does anyone think that just because we've been able to come up with a 'plausible' explanation for how a man was stabbed in the back without positing another man stabbing him, we've really come up with an explanation that conforms with reality?

No.

So, the apparent coherence in an evolutionary model doesn't mean very much to me, especially in light of the fact that it willfully excludes certain possibilities right from the start.  It may very well be that experimentally speaking, no answer could be given to how life arose on this planet.  I would be content with being agnostic on that point.  However, many of those who elevate 'science' pin epistemological emphasis on a theory that 'explains.'  However, the 'explanation' proceeds from unreasonable presumptions.

If you are like me, if you are starting out from the bottom up, you haven't made any judgements yet about whether or not there is a God, or whether or not order in the universe is best ascribed to God, or some other force, or nothing at all.   As such, I would object to a 'police detective' offering as fact an explanation that begins by eliminating other valid possibilities.  An 'explanation' is not the same as a 'fact.'

So, now when I turn my attention to other areas of inquiry that will bear on the question of YEC, if I don't have the preconception that I must adopt a philosophical naturalistic POV for EXPLAINING everything, certain data needs to be factored into the equation.  By way of example (and example only), if I come to the historical conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead, this is a 'fact' that must drive a development of a coherent worldview that meshes with reality.  If, however, I insist on interpreting everything from a philosophical naturalistic POV, and I emphasize explanations proceeding from that assumption as being superior, then the historical conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead is no longer a historical fact, but merely something that now needs to be explained.

Can you explain something like the resurrection within a philosophical naturalistic POV?  Sure you can.  But only by dismissing or de-valuing the weight of the historical method.  Is that really reasonable?  I don't think so.  The mere fact that such an explanation can be invented doesn't mean that that explanation is in line with reality.  It may simply follow from the assumptions.

So, to return to the example of variation with limitations that is OBSERVED within a population, this is an experimental fact that needs to be accounted for, but I see no justifiable reason for extrapolating beyond those experimentally verified limitations only to 'explain' other facts.  If this observed limitation cannot be 'explained' than I'd much rather be agnostic about the implications.  I certainly understand that in order to extrapolate to exceptions to these observations back into history, I am now in the realm of historical inquiry, not empirical inquiry.  If it goes without saying that empirical inquiry requires methodological naturalism, it certainly doesn't follow that historical inquiry does.

In conclusion, all this leads to just one strand for the reasons why I am a YECcer.  A YEC worldview is perfectly consistent with variation with limits, and it does not require me to explain for the mere sake of explaining.

So, now I'll pause for what I expect will be constructive comments.  :)