These way-out examples?

1) Does "on an even footing with" mean "on the same level with"?
2) Does "these way-out examples" mean "these tortured examples"?
3) Does "a fertile or facetious imagination" mean "a person with abundant imagination"?

Background info:

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The point of all these way-out examples is that they are un-
disprovable, yet nobody thinks the hypothesis of their existence is
on an even footing with the hypothesis of their non-existence.
Russell's point is that the burden of proof rests with the believers,
not the non-believers. Mine is the related point that the odds in
favour of the teapot (spaghetti monster / Esmerelda and Keith /
unicorn etc.) are not equal to the odds against.
The fact that orbiting teapots and tooth fairies are undisprov-
able is not felt, by any reasonable person, to be the kind of fact that
settles any interesting argument. None of us feels an obligation to
disprove any of the millions of far-fetched things that a fertile or
facetious imagination might dream up. I have found it an amusing
strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the
questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon