I don't believe Christians have historically gone to war because of some inherant flaw in Christian morals. They might be the best guide that exist to live your life by. Who am I to judge? I think the Crusades where more down to politics than religion and is nothing Catholics/Christians today need to feel guilty about. Ethics is an interesting subject and is not my gripe with Christians or religions in general.

My gripe is the claims religious people make on the origins of our world, and the the bits about heaven, hell and angels. The supernatural stuff. When people are not able or willing to back up their claims there's no debate and it quickly turns farcical.

Not being able to prove that god doesn't exist is not the same thing as proving god exists. All you've done is opened up an infinite number of alternatives. It's just a mathematical head-game and is just silly. Nobody would ever even consider it in any other type of discussions. In logic it's known as "Arugment from ignorance". Link

We have so far never seen a shred of evidence to suport any form of supernatural force. Let's for the sake of argument assume there aren't any, until there apears some. Now we've radically changed the whole basis for suicide bombers, willing troops in the Crusades and a whole host of hate crimes. What all religious people need to understand is that by treating scientific evidence as a cute option in life they are giving nurishment to all the fundamentalists in the world. Humans are social creatures. We tend to believe things we are taught instead of thinking for ourselves.

IDC: You're just dead wrong about the dinosaur example. The bones are evidence of something. We know what types of animals create bones of the sort and we can deduce from this that dinosaurs actually did live at one point. Claiming they didn't is just being daft on purpose. We have no evidence any form of supernatural force ever has created anything on earth ever. Any form of energy exchange leaves traces. Considering all the worlds miracles all the time we should be able to at some point register any of these. But it's so far showed nothing. Claiming god covers all these traces up is...nice.... But why would that benevolent force do that? How can any of this make sense to anyone?

Playing head-games of logic just because you desperately want a god to exist is just deluded. There used to be good reason to believe a god existed. But science has progressed. Today we have other more plausible theories that doesn't necesarily involve anything supernatural. Let's move on. I find just laughing at the religous is a lot harder now when skyscrapers go up in smoke on Mahattan.

And there's religious and religious. Einstein was religious. He believed god was that first spark of life that set off the whole evolution and that first little bump that started the big bang. Today, that is a totally plausible explanation. We don't know any better theory. He did however not believe in heaven, interventions by god or any other supernatural force. So it isn't actually religion as such I'm against, only people who today believe in a supernatural entity interveaning on earth...and on top of that have the bad taste to teach it as fact to their children.

There is absolutly no conflict between being a faithful Catholic and being an atheist. You can follow all the moral comandments. Just don't make any claims on the existance of heaven. It might exist, maybe not. Let's just leave it at that and let some scientist mangage to prove it one day. Just don't count on it, like so many suicide bombers are doing. The church can have a major role as suport and help in our world even if we renounce this rediculous claim in the supernatural benevolent force. It doesn't take much to realise that it's the words in the Bible and Koran that help people, and have helped for all these years. Not some mythical god. The words can keep helping us in a secular world.

The miracle with the American footballer wasn't in god, but on his competetive nature. Would he really be happier by living a lie? God can easily be taken out of the equation. I don't believe we need to live in fear of god to behave against each other. It's a bad reason for faith.

My all time favorite quote is from Arthur C Clarke. "Magic is just what we call science we don't understand", I know the quote isn't exact, but it catches the essance of it.

edit: Denying that science is the best model for explaning how the world works is just plain stupid. Science is today in direct conflict with all of the major organised religions, (except Budhism). Science isn't optional.