It's probably a good thing that I was so busy the last few days, else I'd have used all my time getting in the middle of this....


But as a dedicated debater of Pete for several years....

Pete... you said: "The truth is we all have the same evidence , it is the interpretation that makes the difference."

That's a good point, but it stops a bit short of THE point, which is that there seems to be a bit of disagreement about HOW to recognize, evaluate and interpret data, in order to give it the status OF evidence.
   We have had the various versions of 'what constitutes good science' at length, but you still insist on calling your general opponents 'confidence' and 'acceptance' of many tenets of science *faith*.....This is a major sticking point, and there's really no way to reach anything like understanding if you take that viewpoint.
   Do not be deceived by words... saying "I believe what good, competent scientists tell me." is NOT the same thing as saying "I believe in what the Bible tells me." They are, flatly, NOT the same sort of thing. \

The former is making an assumption that most scientists 1) do not lie, 2) are competent, 3) have looked at as many possible bits of data that they can find, 4) compared various interpretations of that data, 5) given the best interpretation they can make about the data the status of evidence... and finally, 6) being always ready to re-evaluate their conclusions in the light of new data/evidence.
The latter is (usually) accepting one interpretation of one translation of one set of human copied documents as providing data/evidence of a metaphysical concept as being *truth*. What it is evidence of, is that a couple of thousand years ago, various scribes copied some things they were TOLD... and that they probably believed what they were told. These writings are stories.... many are fascinating & inspirational stories (though not all). The stories are filled with magic & wonder, and if repeated often enough, will of course be believed as *truth*. Even when the details of the stories differ (and they often do), people come to accept and **believe** the basic ideas in the stories, and..... this is the crucial point... they are usually NOT willing to entertain any doubt of the basics about metaphysical happenings! Thus... science & theology are not both 'faith'...(even if some careless scientists occasionally seem to act as though they 'believe' some stuff almost like theologians).
   Even Rene Descartes, when trying to 'prove' the existence of God rationally, to add to pure 'faith' got in trouble with the church for daring to even propose formal doubt as a starting place! The church had no place for disagreement... as Copernicus & Galileo discovered.
   Now we have the similar situation in discussions of evolution, the age of the Earth, paleontology...etc. Because certain bits of carefully done scientific data/evidence do not fit with someone counting 'years' in Genesis, (as translated from some old text..), some people whose day job is in a scientific field spend a lot of time looking for ways to discount the data/evidence that has been generally accepted, and theorize in some strange ways about weaknesses in any scientific theory that does NOT jibe with their notion of what they already believe by 'faith.
   Finally... the idea of "something coming out of nothing" is just not relevant. If YOU can't accept that we just don't know, as Steve Shaw put it so well above, well... *shrug*...."something coming out of nothing" is no odder than the idea that there was a 'spirit' that existed before anything existed.... and that this spirit 'created' everything OUT of nothing. Our minds cannot really handle those ideas. We can form sentences referring to what we can't know... but putting names to concepts does not confer reality on them! It's just that some of us don't LIKE not knowing... we want answers... and we'll by golly find answers, even if we have to make them up, then repeat them to our children for a few hundred generations. Can we be right about the basics of those stories? *shrug* maybe...but let's not kid ourselves about the ultimate status of those stories.... believe what YOU 'need' to believe, but don't mess with the workings and procedures of science in indefensible ways...............