Although you question the relevance of my comment to the topic, I think there's some mileage in an examination of your belief in evolutionary dogmatism.
You appear to define those aspects of evolutionary theory with which you are unhappy - let’s call that macroevolution for want of a better term - as dogmatic, unscientific, and inadmissible. Some people have already pointed out an obvious problem with this stance; namely, that it is inconsistent to on the one hand require rigorous empirical evidence for scientific claims, but on the other accept the claims of an ancient civilisation's apparently fantastical text as gospel.
It seems that you are dividing scientific investigation into two - that which can be directly observed through experiment and that which can be inferred from secondary evidence. One you accept, one you don’t. I believe this distinction to be artificial because in an absolute sense
all evidence relies to some degree on the secondary - to the point that we cannot know anything without accepting that it is a past event mediated through our senses and memory. What makes you reject the fossil record as being too removed and mysterious, and yet accept the idea that there were Incan or Egyptian people? If you accept their existence, why is it that you reject Atlantians? Similarly, what do you make of an 'indirect' observation of an atom through an electron microscope?
The question I am asking, then, is this:
Do you draw the line beyond which you cannot believe the claims of evidence-based science because it is too indirect for your liking for any reason other than convenience?
There is an irony in a fundamentalist's approach. When it comes to their favoured religion, its sacred text is considered to be so self-evident as to not require interpretation; however, when looking at the fossil record it is expedient to emphasise humanity's ignorance and to claim that it is impossible to interpret it. By this argument from ignorance it is denied that any claim, no matter how tentative, can be made.
I'd like to respond again to the idea that science is as dogmatic as religion. I don't know if I hold much store in Freud really, but I've always liked the idea of transference, and it (or something like it) seems to be operating here. It benefits you to believe that scientists generally share your tendency to dogmatism. This really isn't true. I'm not saying that people who believe in the efficacy of scientific investigation are always able to discard incorrect ideas about how the world works as quickly as perhaps they should. The unsentimental shedding of errors is, however, the ideal.
For a deeply committed religious type though, this readiness to change beliefs in light of new evidence
cannot be the ideal. Or am I wrong? Do the beliefs of the devout change according to the evidence of the physical world around them?
*Which to me seems to be a convenience with the most wibbly goalposts imaginable and not a rigorously thought out definition.
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