Proof that God exists

[vulcanlogician]

Way to miss everything i just said 

If I did, I apologise.

I think you're both missing each other a bit. I think CoR made some good points about religion as a social construct... sort of taking a gods-eye view of mankind. Think of human culture in the sense of a bacteria "culture"... if a lab technician is experimenting with certain cultures of bacteria she can set up conditions in which some of the bacteria do not survive/reproduce and others do. Under these laboratory conditions, certain strains of bacteria will thrive, others will not.

Now impose this concept on humanity. In the stone and bronze ages, certain "cultures" of humans adopted a religious outlook which created social cohesion. This helped some scattered tribes unite against others. To keep with the metaphor: the "laboratory conditions" of the stone ages favored this religious strain. Now the whole world is civilized, and just like religion was valuable to to the ancients, science helps us survive under these new laboratory conditions. Religion is now a relic, or worse, something that stands in the way of science. The science strain now benefits our survival, and religion has long outlived its usefulness.

I think CoR's argument stumbles where it tries to draw a line to faith and makes claims about mankind's "faith" in science. Science is demonstrable, and in this way conforms to reality despite the laboratory conditions de jour. Had we some way to transmit scientific information to stone age tribes in a way they could comprehend it, and they subsequently used science as their force of social cohesion, they would have dominated all other tribes in their vicinity. Likewise, if we were to transmit Mormonism, a relatively modern religion, back to stone age tribes they would have been none the better for it.

So, CoR, you made some good points about how religion has been valuable to the cultures who practiced them, but you failed in equivocation of science and faith.