I appreciate your low-grade sarcasm, Kevin :-). However, I have been called a bigot, a literalist, a fundamentalist, an absolutist, mean-spirited, an evolutionist, a member of a swarm of ants, a born-again atheist and, worst of all, Mr Shaw. And that's just in the last few days. It's evidence, Kevin, but not as you may want to recognise it. :-)

"As for the suggestion of repetition on your part, perhaps the main example is your constant trope that evidence has to be the only basis for any decision as to what to accept as true, and to demand such evidence."

Well how else can we find truth? Wildest imaginings? Fanciful speculation? Whimsy? Resort to magic and the supernatural? Mystic Meg?? Would you please tell me what is wrong with seeking evidence? While you're at it, what alternative paths to truth are there? Seeking deeper truths by telling lies, maybe? Well tell us what your concept of truth is, and tell us how we can get there without evidence. I'm blowed if I know of any other way.

"You just won't accept the response you have been given, which essentially is that religious belief is essentially a matter of making a decision, rather than of evidence."

I don't give a fig whether anyone believes that or not. All I'd say is that when I make a decision about something I want it to be predicated on being informed. Personally, although I fail quite often in my efforts like most people do, I want my decisions to be on a rational basis. Please tell me where I'm going wrong if you have a minute. Oh, and I'm no automaton, you know. This weekend I've been indulging in my lifelong love of Beethoven's late music and Mozart's piano concertos and I've been reading my two journals from the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and the Royal Meteorological Society, and last week I went to see Carmen. I've made some great advances in the last few months with my knowledge of Britain's moths and butterflies and I've been to a talk on the dragonflies of Andalucia. Mr Spock would be scratching his Vulcan head.

"Demands for "scientific evidence" just aren't relevant. It's analogous to aesthetic judgements..."

So you judge whether to adhere to a belief system on analogies to aesthetic grounds? I mean, are you feeling OK? :-)