Seems like everytime a religion has to put up or shut up, it becomes The Church of Cognitive Dissonance. Will people ever learn, or will they just take up another flavor of delusion? Sorry, rhetorical question.

When you believe nonsense, it's not up to the rational side to prove you wrong. It's up to you to prove it right. But they see it just the opposite, and always will.

"PROVE that an angel didn't come down from heaven and bring golden plates written in a language no one else ever heard of and show JS how to put his head in a hat to translate them and then came back and collected them and took them back to heaven and then showed them to 11 other people who were all related and who all had a financial stake in the book."

You can't say to them, "Prove it did." That just confuses them. Why should they have to prove anything. It's a given that they're right. Nonsense always wins out.

Same thing happened to me at work. We're in the process of getting ready to roll out domestic partner benefits at our next open enrollment. We have all kinds of concrete data that shows it helps a company's bottom line much more than it hurts, that only about 2% of those eligible for it even elect it (it can have negative financial consequences for many) and that the image for the company--of being one that values diversity is well worth the effort.

So we get this study from one of the CEOs of one of our operating companies, who is on the board of the biggest Baptist church in the country, and the study was done by some conservative Christian group that shows the "possible" financial impact to a company who offers DP benefits. Basically it assumes that every gay person in the company will elect the benefits, and that every single one of them has a partner with AIDS and the medical costs for that will bankrupt us (a Fortune 100 company). And we are supposed to refute those findings, even though we've already produced study after study (government backed studies) that have shown otherwise. But he wants to know how we KNOW that his "study" might not happen. If you ask me, the burden of proof is on him. Find even ONE gay person locally who might elect the benefits and who has a partner with AIDS. He'd be hard pressed to do that.

But he's a Christian, so they are assumed to be right. Anyone who takes issue with their craziness must prove them wrong. And proof isn't enough to prove them wrong, let alone the absolute absurdity of their claims. They keep everyone on the hamster wheel and most of us get tired of playing.