[Tea on tuesday]

Originally Posted by Darph

I looked at this and A Letter to a Christian Nation.

I think it's important to read books like this and challenge my own beliefs.

But, you aren't challenging your own beliefs. You are looking at anothers point of view and then discarding that in favor of your own entrenched world view without consideration for the others actual argument. Your post below doesn't address anything that Dawkins brought up.

Originally Posted by Darph

I personally see religion as a blueprint for an ideal society, with a focus on the mamily, and, according to Jesus, the most important commandment: "Love thy neighbor". I think the Old Testament was an outline for how to survive and, frankly speaking, not being a retard (thou shalt not kill, etc). I see the New Test as an evolution of this, going beyond your actions and to your attitude in general.

Any society in which rationality is placed behind faith will never be ideal for me.

Originally Posted by Darph

I think that Christianity has been great for society; it’s brought us out of our Tribal Villages and into the modern world, especially all of us from North Europe.

Pagan religions did that but whatever floats your boat. The rest of the paragraph is a maddening web of logical fallacies including, by my cursory glances, ignoring a common cause, false association and false dilemma.

Originally Posted by Darph

I am a Christian by choice, I think any religious person who looks for more than a few seconds at the universe can easily find plenty of evidence to support a Creationist viewpoint (I.e. planets and moons spinning in opposite directions),

Yeah, that totally follows. Please explain how the spin of planets nad moons is evidence for a creator in any logical way. Here's a hint: it isn't possible.

Originally Posted by Darph

however, irrefutable proof won’t be available until He decides to come down here, and from what I’ve read in the Revelations of St. John, I don’t think he’s going to spend a lot of time debating with us when he does. At this point, there isn’t any way to PROVE anything regarding Cosmic Creation (big bang or creation) or Biological Evolution (We cant force species to change into other species), beyond that, if there was a way, you wouldn’t be able to prove it’s not the mechanism in which God chose to create life/the universe/etc. So it’s very important that both groups of people realize that they don’t possess hard, reproducible PROOF that the universe began either way.

You're looking for absolute proof, which I'm afraid doesn't exist. There is no situation that could occur where you could be absolutely sure that that event had taken place. There always exists and ad hoc hypothesis that will negate that event. You're usage of proof is assinine in that it is unattainable. A better way to determine truth is through observation and investigation through rigidly logical controls. There is no testable evidence that the universe was created, and, ultimately, any faith based approach to explanation for the universe is devoid of usefulness. (Speciation, btw, has been observed in lab settings.) There exists, by means of science and reason, a mound of rationally derived, reproducible evidence that offers predicative powers key to human knowledge.

You have essentially stated that no side has proof, while convieniently ignoring that your idea of proof is unattainable and the fact that one sole side posseses empirical evidence to back thier conclusions.