Caf, I do not have the required hardware to hear the sound bites, but I'm not sure I understand your point here. You seem to be saying that because he is an atheist anything he believes must be wrong. That is really quite ludicrous, but perhaps I misunderstand your position. I have no problem with atheists questioning, or even deriding, my religious beliefs. Some have faith and some do not. Some embrace God's presence and some reject it. That has little to do with the facts of nature and of science.

Caf: "I have little interest in lengthy arguments with you on the topic."

I understand that completely. If my position were unsupportable I wouldn't be eager to defend it either.

Caf: "You ardently believe it, and ardently believe in the people who have promoted it..."

Well, caf, now you're being borderline-outrageous. It's not a matter of 'promotion' but of credibility and evidence, of centuries of research by dedicated scientists, many of them people of religious faith. I believe it because it's the central fact, the absolute CORNERSTONE of modern biology.

Without evolution, nothing in the biology textbook makes sense. Throw the book away, and what are you going to replace it with? Genesis, with two contradictory accounts of creation, each derived from pagan folklore? Is that really what you want America's public school science classes to teach?

Caf: "...but that sort of faith doesn't make it true."

Who is the one with the 'faith [that] doesn't make it true'? Seems to me that's you.

Caf: "A teacher in a college class that is supposed to focus on persuasive speech making the topic of intelligent design taboo..."

I don't think there would, or should, be much objection to a COLLEGE class discussing ID as a matter of religion or philosophy. The objection is to claims that ID is scientifically valid, which it is not.

I might add, in this respect, that you may have noticed the recent lottery drawing with a prize of over 350 million dollars, and one lone winning ticket. Following the "ID'ers" reasoning, that MUST have been a fake because the odds of winning were just too great!

Caf: "Facts are not to be considered..."

Modern biology is ALL about facts. Religion is about faith.

Ben writes: "I will start with the idea that I believe in the Bible as written."

Ben, I believe in the Bible too. I have been reading it since I was old enough to read and have never found in it anything that would lead me away from God or diminish my personal relationship with him; on the contrary, everything that I read there enhances my religious faith. But the Bible is a book of faith, and to some extent a book of conduct, but not a book of scientific fact.

If it were a book of science, and if God had inspired the writers to write down scientific truths that they could not otherwise have known, then there would be evidence of that, and there is not.

The author of Ecclesiastes, writing in Solomon's name, writes of the sun circling the earth not as metaphor but because that was believed to be fact at the time. If he had written, 'The sun appears to rise, and the sun appears to set, but it's really the other way around', then I might consider the Bible as a book of 'inspired' scientific truth.

When Leviticus warns that the hare is unclean, it does so because it was known that hares did (and still do) carry all sorts of diseases. That Leviticus claims that the hare chews the cud, when in fact it does not, is unimportant.

The problem with believing the Bible to be literally true is that you then have to deal with all of the instances in which it is not. That would certainly include the two conradictory creation accounts.

Ben: "On the other hand "Macroevolution" or "Darwinian Evolution" has plenty of scientests that do not agree with evolution and see problems with it."

Both those terms are meaningless shibboleths of the 'creationist' hoaxters. There are certainly disagreements among legitimate scientists regarding the exact way(s) that evolution takes place.

Ben: "Some of the most vocal were just mentioned, but for a sample, here is a website http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/ that deals with the ideas of these scientists, over 500 of them, for now".

Well, I certainly agree with you that they're vocal! Nonetheless, you would be VERY hard-pressed to name THREE who have respectable credentials in fields of science pertinent to evolution and no pre-existing religious agenda. If either you or Caf can name three, please do so. I will check their credentials, including peer review of their work, and report back.

Ben: "I will admit that I am biased against evolution. It is antithetical to everything that I believe in."

I don't understand that, Ben. As I mentioned before, evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. There is no alternative that would stand the test of scientific investigation. Do you think that all of science is somehow diabolical?

Ben: "I am extremely frustrated by those who refuse to even discuss the evidence."

If that is true, then you are frustrated with the 'creationists'. The literature of modern biology is enormous. It is based on exhaustive scientific study and research, not ancient myths, and changes continually as science advances. There are no 'foregone conclusions' here. 'Creationism' advances only in the sense that the crackpots and charlatans who espouse it keep coming up with new methods of promotion, each one as dishonest as the last.

'Creationism' is false because, among other reasons, it is neither provable nor disprovable. It is not provable because nothing it teaches can be factually demonstrated. It is not disprovable because no amount of evidence contradicting its claims, no matter how valid and firmly founded, will ever be accepted by its proponents.