Thanks Tim, I appreciate your thoughtful response. I'm not sure I agree that beliefs are exclusively a matter of weighing relevant evidence. That certainly plays a role and a stronger role in those interested, as you are I'm sure, of getting to the truth. However, there are a number of factors that affect personal beliefs. The worldview including religion in the family, community and greater nation for example, can have a very strong influence on beliefs. Sometimes it takes a great deal of effort weighing evidence to overcome that, and most don't try or want to. Your example of the flat earth is a good one. But there are a lot of ideas that we held in the past that we have had to change because of what we have learned, such as the absolute nature of space and time in Newton's description versus the relative view of it in Einstein's view. I kind of think we are still in that process of coming to grips with that as the implications are still being revealed. I think the nature of matter is another example. We thought we knew what it was--something hard, solid, real. Now, as a number of my and other posts here have pointed out, maybe it is far from what we thought. I like what Dr. Egnor said, ask 10 philosophers what is matter and you will get 11 different answers.

As for your second point--the who created God question. That is the "turtles all the way down issue." It seems the only answer can be that God is the only uncreated, infinite, eternal being. The turtles stop at God. We could say that the creator of our universe is just one powerful being, but at some point there has to be a uncreated and infinite reality. Whatever or whoever that is deserves the name of God.