Converting

[R00tKiT]

The religious narrative begins thiusands of years ago, not millions.  And many within religious circles seem convinced the world us around 6;000 years old.

That's only true for the Christian case. What about other religions you ruled out because of some supposed contradictions?

I also accept that an occasional scientist has perpetuated a hoax or rushed to published findings instead of waiting for those findings to be reviewed.

Of course, there are those in the relugious workd who have done the same.  The almost yearly "discovery" of Noah's Ark seems a good example.  But I can find more if pressed.

The point being, emphasising such actions within one group while ignoring them in your own isn't good. (And no, I'm not accusing you of such an omission).

The truth of the Abrahamic religions hardly depends on Noah's Ark being discovered somewhere, you know. And we're not the ones relying 100% on empirical data, we consider pure reasoning and studying historical figures/prophets a good way to reach truth too.

1. So are you. You are imparting an exclusively human concern (‘justice’) to god.

How do you know justice is exclusively a human concern, and not God's too? 

2. No one’s talking about the absence of law. If you want to claim that divine law exists, go right ahead. But ignorance or awareness of that law is immaterial to the concept of justice.

Justice always presupposes some law out there. If I give candies to a bunch of kids justly, that is, give each one of them an equal amount, I already suppose there is a law of some kind prohibiting unfair distribution.

3. Suppose a god decrees that the punishment for my sins is that I go to hell. As I’m a particularly unrepentant and enthusiastic sinner, it would be justice for me to go to hell. But if god forgives me, it has been merciful, not just.

You can only talk about justice in comparison to someone else. If you and some other person do the exact same things in this life, and then god decides to forgive you and punish the other person, here we can invoke unjustice. But if he forgives you both, he was merciful to you, but there is not enough data to say he was unjust.

So, mercy doesn't nullify justice. It's only the case if mercifulness itself is distributed unjustly.

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Your mythology is showing.

The problem that Theistic Evolution is incapable of overcoming is that "modern humans" didn't spring into existence at some sharply defined point in time. Every individual was descended from ancestors that were very nearly indistinguishable from their progeny. Only tiny changes occur from one generation to the next. That's how evolution works. The "modern human" was born of parents that we so-very-nearly-modern humans as to be indistinguishable. Science has no problem with these shades of grey but TE requires a sharp division that simply isn't present. God has to draw a line and say "Screw everybody who came before this. They just didn't make the cut. Because I haven't evolved them enough yet."

First of all, it's not clear that the religious figure of Adam coincides with the first modern human.  As both the label "modern humans" and the exact epoch when Adam supposedly lived according to religions are not precisely determined. Second, if God picks modern humans to be the chosen creatures, where is exactly the problem in doing that? And what makes you think whoever came before modern humans didn't know God in some other way, or whether they needed any guidance at all if they lacked cognitive ability to receive it.