Dear MJT,
I have not posted with you before. I have given up on getting WG to stop claiming that evolutionary theory is all chance and random. It is not-- BOTH chance and necessity (natural selection) are essential. What follows is an extended quote from Francisco Ayala, a former President of the Am. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science. After that a short definition of what constitutes a scientific theory-- to differentiate it from your other 2 systems of belief.

Francisco Ayala.2004. “Design without Designer” in W.A. Dembski and M. Ruse, eds. Debating Design. From Darwin to DNA pp. 55-80 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

pp.60-61. This criticism [monkeys on typewriters] would be valid if evolution depended only on random processes. But natural selection is a nonrandom process that promotes adaptation by selecting combinations that “make sense”—that is, that are useful to the organisms. The analogy of the monkeys would be more appropriate if a process would be chosen every time they appeared on the typewriter; and then we would also have typewriters with previously selected words rather than just letters on the keys; and again there would be a process that selected meaningful sentences every time they appeared in this second typewriter. If every time words such as “the”, “origin”, “species” and so on appeared on the first kind of typewriter; they each became a key I the second kind of typewriter, meaningful sentences would be occasionally produced in this second kind of typewriter. If such sentences became incorporated into the keys of a third kind of typewriter, in which meaningful paragraphs were selected whenever they appeared, it is clear that pages and even chapters “making sense” would eventually be produced.

We need no carry the analogy too far, since the analogy is not fully satisfactory; but the point is clear. Evolution is not the outcome of purely random processes; rather, there is a “selecting” process, which picks up adaptive combinations because they reproduce more effectively and thus become established populations. These adaptive combinations constitute, in turn, new levels of organization upon which the mutation (random) plus selection (nonrandom or directional) process again operates.

The manner in which natural selection can generate novelty in the form of accumulated hereditary information may be illustrated by the following example. In order to be able to reproduce in a culture medium, some strains of the colon bacterium Escherichia coli require that a certain substance, the amino acid histidine, be provided in the medium. When a few such bacteria are added to a cubic centimeter of liquid culture medium, they multiply rapidly and produce between two and three billion bacteria in a few hours. Spontaneous mutations to streptomycin resistance occur in normal (i.e., sensitive) bacteria at rates of the order of one in a hundred million (1 x 10-8) cells. In our bacterial culture, we would expect between twenty and thirty bacteria to be resistant to streptomycin due to spontaneous mutation. If a proper concentration of the antibiotic is added to the culture only the resistant cells survive. The twenty or thirty surviving bacteria will start reproducing, however, and – allowing a few hours for the necessary number of cell divisions—several billion bacteria will then be produced, all resistant to streptomycin. Among cells requiring histidine as a growth factor, spontaneous mutations able to reproduce in the absence of histidine arise at the rate of about four in one hundred million (4 x 10-8) bacteria. The streptomycin-resistant cells may now be transferred to a culture with streptomycin but no histidine. Most of them will not be able to reproduce, but about a hundred will start reproducing until the available medium is saturated. Natural selection has produced, in two steps, bacterial cells resistant to streptomycin and not requiring histidine for growth. The probability of the two mutational events happening in the same bacterium is about four in ten million billion (1 x 10-8 x 4x 10-8 = 4 x 10-16) cells. An event of such low probability is unlikely to occur even in a large laboratory culture of bacterial cells. With natural selection, cells having both properties are common results.

pp. 64. Natural selection accounts for the “design” of organisms, because adaptive variations tend to increase the probability of survival and reproduction of their carriers at the expense of maladaptive, or less adaptive, variations. The arguments of Paley and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises against the incredible probability of chance accounts of the origin of the organisms and their adaptations are well taken, as far as they go. But neither these scholars, nor any other writers before Darwin, we able to discern that there is a natural process (namely natural selection) that is not random, but rather oriented and able to create order, or to “create.” The traits that organisms acquire in their evolutionary histories are not fortuitous but determined by their functional utility to the organisms, and they come about in small steps that accumulate over time, each step providing some reproductive advantage over the previous condition.
Chance, nevertheless, an integral part of the evolutionary process. The mutations that yield the hereditary variations available to natural selection arise at random, independent of whether they are beneficial or harmful to their carriers. But this random process (as well as others that come to play in the great theater of life) is counteracted by natural selection, which preserves what is useful and eliminates what is harmful. Without mutation, evolution could not happen, because there would be no variations that could be differentially conveyed from one generation to another generation. But without natural selection, the mutation process would yield disorganization and extinction, because most mutations are disadvantageous. Mutation and selection have jointly driven the marvelous process that, starting from microscopic organisms, has produced orchids, birds, and humans.
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A theory is stronger than a belief in that it just doesn't have "some" evidence it has a lot of evidence, this evidence has been tested, i.e. attempts have been made to disprove it. Good scientific theories also have other qualities-- they are productive, i.e. they suggest further experiments and extensions, they predict things that can be found, etc. etc.

Bernard