I'm not comfortable with "believe," Bill, as I've said many times in those "pete threads." ;-). "Believe" means "to accept, on balance, without evidence." The flip side is that "I don't believe" means that "I don't accept, on balance, though I haven't got the evidence." The debate is somewhat skewed, though, in favour of believers. To dig up the usual old chestnut, if you tell me that there is a chocolate teapot in orbit around Jupiter, it's pretty useless for me to say that I don't believe you. You'll simply tell me that I can't prove that you're wrong, which is true. You've succeeded in playing the game on my turf, so grrr. Far better for me to tell you that your claim is outlandish, and that, whilst there's a vanishingly-small prospect that it's true, I require evidence of the scientific kind (definitely not the religious kind), otherwise I'll just ignore you and have another beer. That's how I feel about UFOs. So, I neither believe nor not believe that they exist. I shrug until you can come up with something credible. The ball's in your court, not on my turf...