Rather than avoid... present an example or define evidence and an example or definition of non-evidence, according to Subduction Zone. I don’t have the entire community at my disposal, so you will have to speak on behalf of evidence and non-evidence for your community.
Let me see if I can help. Evidence is, as the word implies, anything that is evident. Evidence of what, is the question.
We have a series of fossils of skulls and other bones of creatures intermediate between a chimplike animal and a manlike one. When we radiodate them, the more chimplike, the older they are. That is evident, therefore that is evidence. Of what, though?
We think it's evidence of the evolution of man from an ancestral ape species that bifurcated into two subtribes, panina and hominina, the skulls showing the path from this common ancestor to man. What else could they be? Whatever you suggest cannot be as good an idea as that they are transitional forms in the evolution of man from a quadrupedal ape ancestor.
Maybe you think they're all frauds planted by people or even gods or extraterrestrials. Maybe, but the evolutionary understanding is more reasonable.
What is not evidence? As I said, anything detectable is evidence. But evidence of what? Creationists often tell us that the creation itself is evidence of a creator. Disagree. It is evidence that the universe exists in the manner that it does. It's existence doesn't help us decide whether it had an intelligent designer or not. Neither hypothesis is supported over the other by the existence of the universe as we understand it to date. Finding irreducible complexity in biological systems would be evidence for an intelligent designer hypothesis, but the universe without that is not.
Likewise with the Bible. It is evident, therefore evidence. But of what? It's not evidence of a god, nor that any of its contents are accurate. It's evidence that such a book was written. I'd add that because it contains so many internal contradictions, failed prophecies, unkept promises, moral and intellectual errors attributed to a god, and errors in science and history that it is evidence that it cobbled together by a collection of people that didn't know as much as we do today much less as much as a god would, and that they gave personal opinions that often were in error or contradicted other opinions.
I know what can be tested and repeated, I also know what cannot be tested and repeated. I do not mistake anecdotal/inference from evidence.
Good. Inference is not evidence and shouldn't be confused with it. Inference is what is drawn from evidence by the application of reason to it.
Many creationists believe evolution theory as is.
Darwin's theory makes no provision for man being made in God's image or of him having a soul, which is in conflict Christian doctrine. One can only pick one or the other without self-contradiction, not both.
Neither of us can prove or disprove creationism and/or chance in an adequate manner. No one ever has.
True, but irrelevant and unnecessary. Proof is not the standard in science or most other places. Empirical adequacy is. If an idea works, we use it. If it doesn't, we modify or toss it. Evolutionary theory works. It can be used to predict which observations are possible and which are not, and to improve the human condition. Creationism can do neither. So, it's an easy decision.
