That's one of the problems this thread was meant to address:  The fact that religion gets handled with kids gloves.  If anyone else was making the same nonsensical claims and were being as dense as some of the people in this thread regarding any other topic, they'd be laughed off the board.  But since it's religion, and religion is sacred, it's okay to use faulty arguments since they've been in existence for the better part of a millenium.  

It's not about your responses not being to my liking, some responses despite disagreeing with my point have been agreeable and mature.  Criticising science and evolution and the credibility of the group of most intelligent people on earth is not something that should be tolerated.  That's flaming a group (of scientists), which is no worse than me flaming a group (of religious people).  

I'm also noticing a huge problem with the mods responding negatively to semantics.  I can call you ignorant as long as I back it up with explanations as to WHY you're ignorant, but if I use the words stupid, moronic, imbecillic, or any other variation indicating you're less than intelligent, I will get banned, even if you had an IQ of 75 and my claims were entirely true.  Now, I'm not saying this about you, but some people in this thread certainly have shown an aggressive dedication to willful ignorance, and I can't think of any way to describe them other than 'flat out stupid'.  Not becuase they don't agree with me, but because they can't grasp the simplest ideas regarding logic and rationale.  Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a stupid person, modern culture has led us to believe everyone is special;  this is a falsehood, not everyone is special. 

I'll probably be banned for this, based on what I've seen.  

Sounds like some people just don't want to acknowledge the Law of Parsimony or Occam's Razor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor )  which posits that if you have simple, rational explanations for things, then there's no need to attach a faith-based / supernatural explanation to them.

In effect since every claim that has ever been put forth as correct by Fundamentalist Bible believers has been found to be in error since Gallileo demonstrated that the earth isn't the center of the universe, Darwin and his successors demonstrated that all the animals didn't pop up fully formed in seven days but only reached their present state after millions of years of evolution, and geologists and astronomers demonstrated that the earth is far older than 6,000 years of age;

Or were found to have never happened eg. no archaeological evidence for Hebrew slaves in Egypt, no real mention in the earliest written Christian accounts that Jesus ever resurrected and its being demonstrated since the time of Julius Welhausen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis) that The Bible was not literally handed down from God to Moses as believers long believed but  "The Bible"took over 1,000 years to write with much scribal editing being put into the mix to remove or insert whatever parts various groups of priests wanted stressed over the 1,000 year time period;

And all of the miracles of the book like those in Egypt being found to have perfectly rational scientific explanations or can be explained by inferring that various prophets were on drugs or never even existed or were greatly expanded upon by different authors eg. "Isisah" actually having been written by 3 or more authors over a lengthy time period;

Then if Occam's Razor holds true as it is generally accepted that it should, it's illogical for anyone to have faith. 

Sounds to me like someone can't think about the concepts of religion without assuming that the stories in the Bible should be interprented as literal truth.

Let me try to cut through many layers of retoric and emotion to try to make my point very simple:

At the core, the question of religion to me boils down to thoughts like: Where does an emotion come from? Is an emotion 'real'? Does it exsist and can be measured? Is is simply a certain configuration of electrons in a brain, and that's it? Or is there something in the world that can not be quantified and measured that lends quality to our minds? This question is (so far at least) impossible to solve using science and the experimental method bacause it deals with issues that are potentionaly unobservable. It becomes a question of faith. The way I see it, reducing the world to a purely mechanical system is just as much a leap of faith as putting some sort of spiritual properties into the metaphysics.

I'll admit that I don't think certain things like ghosts or maybe esp have been fully explained (away) yet.  However, the bolded is the position of 70% of American Christians and the line of reasoning that they base their political decisions upon in a country that is supposed to be founded upon the Principles of Separation of Church and State thus having an undue influence in such a nation.  Ftom your post, it seems that you're not in agreement with that position, so why shouldn't their erroneous position be argued against?

I'll admit that I don't think certain things like ghosts or maybe esp have been fully explained (away) yet.  However, the bolded is the position of 70% of American Christians and the line of reasoning that they base their political decisions upon in a country that is supposed to be founded upon the Principles of Separation of Church and State thus having an undue influence in such a nation.  Ftom your post, it seems that you're not in agreement with that position, so why shouldn't their erroneous position be argued against?

Any position should be argued against, I am only trying to bring into the discussion what I feel is a more accurate understanding of religious questions. Sure, some people take the bible at face value, and they are easy to attack on that stance with verifiable scientific proof. However, the true nature of religion is not discussed in those terms. Religion comes into play when you ask yourself: If the universe is mechanical, do I really have free will? The consequences of that question are far reaching of course, and again, not verifiable by science.

If you feeel better proving that there is no giant magic man physically living in the sky behind the clouds, then sure, go ahead, disprove this all day long. It doesn't do anything to prove or disprove religion however. That is my only point. At the core of it, when someone argues that God is real, they are really arguing that morals are dictated by a universal law that we can't know and observe, and not just some arbitary combination of atoms. That some people claim to think they know that being gay is wrong or that wearing a condom is a sin is another matter all together, and I must admit, not very interesting to me personally.

Any position should be argued against, I am only trying to bring into the discussion what I feel is a more accurate understanding of religious questions. Sure, some people take the bible at face value, and they are easy to attack on that stance with verifiable scientific proof. However, the true nature of religion is not discussed in those terms. Religion comes into play when you ask yourself: If the universe is mechanical, do I really have free will? The consequences of that question are far reaching of course, and again, not verifiable by science.

If you feeel better proving that there is no giant magic man physically living in the sky behind the clouds, then sure, go ahead, disprove this all day long. It doesn't do anything to prove or disprove religion however. That is my only point. At the core of it, when someone argues that God is real, they are really arguing that morals are dictated by a universal law that we can't know and observe, and not just some arbitary combination of atoms. That some people claim to think they know that being gay is wrong or that wearing a condom is a sin is another matter all together, and I must admit, not very interesting to me personally.