Atheists and anti creationists get to define what is and what isn't evidence around here. I think every claim that something has supporting evidence should be supported with reasoning for the claim. You people are going to go around and around in circles with creationists because of your false paradigm concerning how important "evidence" is when discussing issues. "Evidence" doesn't stop you guys when you talk about all the matter and energy of the universe just popping into existence. You just assume its true because no one has been able to come up with an alternative explanation that has its own "evidence" and evidence that meets your definition as well.
Well, science is based on evidence and working with the evidence. If a creationist wants to claim to be doing science or to be talking about science, then it is perfectly right and proper to get that creationist to present evidence and be ready to discuss it. For example, if someone were to try to engage you in talking about what the Bible says, wouldn't you expect him to be able to quote from the Bible in order to support his claims? Why expect anything less of a creationist making claims about scientific evidence?
Along with evidence is working with that evidence, figuring out what it means. That is where we build hypotheses and test them and refine them and then eventually we bundle together hypotheses into a model of how something works, which we call a
theory. This should be old-hat for you, since I would have expected some of your classes to have covered the scientific method.
Also, when you require a complete explanation, be aware of what will entail. In
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, then-new PhD Astronomy Cliff Stoll described how, working in the UC Berkeley computer center, he discovered a break-in into their system and how he and the NSA tracked it back to a German hacker spying for the Soviet Union. I recommend the book highly as an enjoyable read -- NOVA did an episode about his adventures which I once found on YouTube. In it, he described his final oral exams for his PhD. The examiner asked him, "Why is the sky blue?" As I recall, it took Stoll four hours to completely answer that question.
Similarly, if you were to ask why 2+2 is 4, then you would need to wait until you have learned number theory, an upper-division or graduate-level class in mathematics. You need to have had advanced training in mathematics to understand how and why addition and the other arithmetic operations work.
Another example, I could take you through how a computer's CPU works, but it would not be practical. Not only would you need to know and understand digital electronics (one of the simplest forms of electronics) and Boolean Algebra, but you would need to be ready and willing to spend many hours with me chasing sparks through several tens of pages of logic diagrams. It can be done, but within the context of this forum it would not be practical.
In the meantime, there is a discipline called "philosophy of science", which examines how science works and should work. Possibly an area to read up on.
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