More walls!
1) No argument there. Well I take that back a little bit. Thousands of years of oppression in the name of religion gives it quite the reputation.
If religion did more harm than good, the only thing that proves is that not all religions are good. I can even take it a step further and say that most religions probably aren't good. That doesn't rule out the existence of God, though.
if someone says "i don't drink alcohol because I'm _____", then that's a copout answer. a truly religious person should be able to state reasons and not just say "because I'm _____".
That's just as idiotic as saying "i'm good at basketball because I'm black"
and your moral statement of "you just know you shouldn't" I don't think cuts it for me. Some people really do need to be taught principles such as honesty, etc. etc. It makes complete sense to me and you, but some people live in a world full of dishonesty and do not know anything else.
I'm just saying that morality is usually based on some sort of guiding principle, and its supposed to be religion. You can see by the world today that religion is for the most part failing, so I don't know. I guess you could just say "c'mon man, its common sense;" though I believe that is just as much of a copout as "c'mon man, WWJD?"
2) Why does the possibility of a creator bug you so much? I don't understand the conflict there. Assume that we didn't know who painted the Mona Lisa so we do intense studies and stuff about the paint and art style.
And then BAM, hey we just discovered the Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa. Its not like we would simply give up and say "case closed." We could still analyze the art styles and stuff.
So year, we need figure out some way to prove to ourselves that God exists. However, that evidence many times goes beyond the scope of science. We really can't do repeatable lab tests to prove that God exists or not, much in the same way we can't come up with some lab test to prove that alexander the great existed or not. But there are definitely criteria that we can hold so that we can have a basis for belief.
So at the end of it all, I think its still really tough, deep stuff. We just have to be humble enough to accept that we know very little of this universe ^_^
