It's good to have someone ask those questions. I suppose that some of the defensiveness is cynicism, as it seems that occasionally we get a theist dressed up as a conflicted agnostic asking "tough questions" who winds up trying to take everyone on a trip to Crazyville. But I like that there are usually people who take the questions at face value and make a good-faith (heh) effort at answering them. I don't care who claims to have won a debate, I care that the individual posts and comments are there so that everyone can judge for themselves. And even learn a few things, while we're at it.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
