That's really an excellent question.
I'm convinced from these discussions that most of the disagreement stems from differences in our upbringing and differences in the class of people we trust. It's pretty obvious that some people trust family and friends before the testimony of scientists. And vice versa.
I guess it’s easier to find good questions than it is to find good answers.
In the legal world, eyewitness testimony is notoriously lousy.
And the recent numerous accounts of people convicted of crimes because of it, only to be exonerated when DNA evidence was later introduced, is evidence of that.
It’s not a new phenomenon. The “grassy knoll” at the Kennedy assassination, for example. And the problem is testable. Show a hundred people the same slide for a few seconds, or better yet, the same picture from a different angle, and you’ll get all kinds of reports of what they saw.
As a self proclaimed scientist, you have no evidence to support this conclusion other than a bias observation of a small sample size by someone who likes his conclusion. This is what I have been warning everyone who cared to read my posts about.
If you personally arrive at conclusions with such little fragile support, perhaps you are projecting the same attribute toward those who have studied the creation evolution debate and side with the creationists or deists. You may assume they arrive at their point of view with the same level of evidence, thought and reason that you applied in coming to this conclusion.
[[It’s pretty obvious that some people trust family and friends before the testimony of scientists.]]
I trust scientists, right up until they step outside their profession and start claiming htings that have zero scientific evidence to back it up, and worse yet, when the scientific evidence actually argues against what is being claimed- and not just slightly against, but very strongly against- then I tend to not have faith in htem beyond the actual evidences