oh, I read the whole post, I even read a decent amount of the link you provided (not buying a book, so I didn't look at that link), the thing is...I'm sorry dude, but most of your points and opinions are pretty strongly off the mark.  You keep bringing up evolution, and I'm still insisting you keep it in the appropriate threads.  you're turning this into a war of "Religion vs science", and this should certainly NOT turn into that. yes this thread is about evidence and such, but that doesn't mean it's a launchpad for "oh, let's talk about how bullshit science is!" which is what you're doing.  

Again, I believe jesus was real, I DO think there's plenty of evidence to suggest he was a real people, but a lot of the stories were logically exagerrated.  and just because the bible does have some things in it that match up with what history books say, that doesn't mean God is real. That's (ironically) a pretty massive leap of faith.  That's like saying that because the Animorphs books took place in the real world and mentioned many real events and people, that there's really an alien invasion that's being thwarted by teens who can turn into bugs and shit.  LEap of faith, not evidence. 

I don't want to be a dick, but if you're not gonna read the thread or atleast the original post to see what the thread is about, perhaps it's best you not post in it unless you're doing moderator-y things?  I mean, I know you're the boss around these parts, but I've made my case pretty clear throughout.   

If religious people insist on pushing their faith on me and on others, through violent or nonviolent means, they should be subject to the same burden of proof that science has.  If they keep it to themselves, they have every right to believe what they want, but the second they expect to control people, stick their noses in science, or claim to have all the answers to life and love, then they should offer evidence to back those claims.  

Two seperate things here, and I've been steadily insisting people keep the evolution shit to other threads for the exact same reason. 

I read the OP (and even posted early on) and the update.  I only mentioned evolution because someone else quoted me and mentioned it, I just didn't want to make another post.

As for your pushing religion statement, that's not exactly right.  Someone can try to push their religion on you and it does not have to be based on fact, again, because it is faith.  It's up to you to accept that faith or not.  As for pushing through force, that's another thread topic completely different from this one.  Here, you're asking something that cannot be proven to be proven.  Just because some people are pricks doesn't mean religion has to be proven, it should just mean they should stop being pricks.  It has nothing to do with the absurd idea of proving if God exists.

I don't need religion proven, onlu by the ones that insist on pushing it and having it in our schools.

... makes me wonder which story was based off of which... oh wait...

yeah I think I'm done here.  there's just no getting through here.  you believe what you wanna believe, I'll go believe waht I wanna believe, thanks. 

No I thought that was what you were argueing you said "I never said in ANY way, I said God exposes himself to people trough FAITH" which seems to emply that you belive that God only interacts directly with people of faith. I was arguing if that was true how did the belife in god start if god only interacted with people who already belived. Unless you are arguing that God doesn't exist outside of human thought just like the tooth fairy? But that would seem to conflict with your other belifes. 

As for Conversations with God book series, I generally avoid taking works of fiction writen by someone with aprent mental problems as fact. Hairing voices in your head is a suprisingly common symptom of mental illness and is often triggered by great emotional or physical distress, the author claims to have started hearing voices while at a low period in his life and writing an angry letter to God asking questions about why his life wasn't working. At least writing the series of books seems to have been theroputic for him (talking about the voices is known to help sufferers) I don't think people reinforcing his delusions is healthy.

Well, to be honest, I think he's making a point that, while horribly wrong, deserves to be addressed. 

I believe what he's trying to say is that religion has no less evidence supporting it than evolution.  This is almost mind-bogglingly counterfactual, of course.  But, continuing on from that, it follows that just as you don't want religious doctrine being pushed into our educational or legal systems, creationists don't appreciate having "EVILUTION" taught to their kids as fact. 

PADIB: 
You are completely, utterly wrong if you think that the science of evolution has no more supporting evidence than Christian doctrine.  The Bible is basically all the evidence you have.  Historians and archaeologists have been able to put together some sketchy support of SOME of the stuff in the Bible, but obviously nothing like Jesus walking on water etc.  We don't have a diary of a guy who watched him being crucified and saw him die and be buried and camped out at the grave and saw the stone crack or fall away from the hole or however the story goes.  There is only a lot of hearsay, usually decades later, about people talking about OTHER people talking about "that guy who they say rose from the dead". 

Scientists get "supporting evidence" for a theory whenever they do an experiment.  For instance, they might figure that if a particular theory is true, something will happen, and if it's not true, something else will happen.  Then they do the experiment and find out what happens.  By confirming and contradicting and refining theories all the time, science has an extremely good idea of how the world works, including how species change over time.  And "evolve" into noticeably different beings than their ancestors were many many years ago. 

What do you mean, padib, when you say that "genetic evolution" has never been observed?  Did you know they watched bacteria that are famous for not eating citrate turn into bacteria that  love to eat it? 

As for "devolution", since you didn't explain it here, I might be wrong, but I think I know what you're referring to.  It is not taught because it is bullshit.  More precisely, it has not stood up to tests the way other science has that is taught to society's children, particularly evolution.  I do not even know if it is even capable of being so tested, or if it's total crap (from the perspective of scientific illumination of nature's workings) like intelligent design. 

http://youtu.be/GYNmFQkHBaE

http://youtu.be/Hr2jRxLdJ2A

http://youtu.be/QJPPXujssLY

http://youtu.be/RiL8_iVNYR0

Y U NO AT LEAST DO SOME RESEARCH ??????

You are asking a very dumb question here to be honest. ''How did belief in God started?'' I mean seriously? People believed in higher power ever since their mind was developed enough to ask questions. Belief in Christian God was started by son of God himself, and its religion puts a lot more emphasis on ''correct faith'' than any other religion out there. A person is free to start having faith in God any time he/she wants. If your asking how human kind as whole started believing in  in higher power in th first place, thats another topic and this thread is probably most derailed one on the site, so no need to go there.

As for the book, the writer didnt actually speak to God in literal meaning of the word, you can say he had a spiritual enlightment, and all the stuff he says about God in the books makes perfect sense and doesnt go agianst any other religion or science. The world conversation is only used to atract customers and readers