Despite the title, there is nothing special about this thread. It is merely one more series of postings by members and guests who are unable to actually create a discussion or dialog because of entrenched positions and an unwillingness to make an honest effort to understand the actual issues.

Before you can engage in meaningful dialog, you need to set the ground rules… and then try to stick to them. Think of peace talks… to even get to table there is usually a list of demands/requirements that need to be met before anyone agrees to show up.

Trust vs Faith - this is where I suspect our inability to discuss the issue of evolutionary theory in relation to faith and/or revelation dogma. Religion requires faith and science requires objective observation and trust in those who use the tool of scientific method to do so properly. That's why science relies upon peer review and the ability to replicate observations. Science relies upon trust in the process. There is no other way to build upon a body of work without the need to replicate centuries of prior work. And when an observation does not agree with what was previously learned or thought, then that's when more work is done to explain the discrepancy – either as an error or a special case that better explains the facts.   So faith and trust are not the same… faith is internal belief and can resist outside influences. Trust must be supported… if trust is betrayed, trust is lost. Trust is maintained by verification… I don't need faith to accept that 2 plus 2 equals 4… it's an equation that I can replicate for myself. I have taken college courses that deal with chemistry and physics. I know there is more than one form of carbon and that carbon 14 is radioactive and can used to determine the age of organic samples as old as 50 thousand years.   Using uranium decay we can age rocks from the earth and the moon in the range of 3 billion years. This is trust, not faith.

People of faith take from their dogma the facets that they select… facets that fit their personality. They take for themselves what them want or need to believe.   How else to explain how a single book(s) such as the Christian bible or the Islamic Koran can be used by both rational moderates and extremist zealots to support their viewpoints.    Can you really have it both ways? Which is truth and which is heresy?

Throughout this and other thread on science and religion, there has been a pervasive refusal by those supporting the creationist viewpoint to accept the assertion that science does not rely on faith. This includes Pete because he is the one posting on this thread and who keeps coming back to phrases that imply that anyone who accepts evolutionary theory as clinging to faith or belief.

I regret that Pete is like those door to door evangelists… who come to "save" you whether you need it or not.   They listen only closely enough to formulate a response that is designed to put their viewpoint as the correct one and really make no effort to understand, much less accept, what you may tell them. They parrot back to you what they have been told are legitimate arguments. You can not hold a discussion with a parrot any more than you can converse with a wall.

Pete, I am sorry that you find it so upsetting; but the world is far older than 6 thousand years and it has been billion or so years since the earliest discovered lifeforms arose. And no... we do not have all the answers, but we do have enough to support evolutionary theory and nothing at all to support the garden of Eden.

Harking back to my reference to peace talks… world peace is as likely as an actual discourse on this thread. Mores the pity.