I agree with with most of your thoughts below.
As for existing of God not having any evidence, well, I don't know, I'm open to his existance. Heck, Albert Einstein said himself that the more he studied the universe the more he was convinced that God exist. Even Darwin believed in a creator.


>>I read an artile about three/four years ago that stated that many of the scientists that study evolution have never even seen or touch a real fossil. Not only becuase they're to fragile to be handled, but because there really isn't that much of them. So they rely on cast made from the original and even with that the casts arn't always an accurate representation of the original.
>>In many instances they use plaster to fill in the gaps and holes using "rough" estimates of how they think the whole specimen would have looked like.

>Science does look at scientifical clues, not religion. Yes, there are questions about missing links, but how would you expect fossiles from hundred thousands or even millions of years to survive? And our history is very recent and only now we reached a significant number of population. Millions of years by dinosaur domination has left far more dinausaur domination than that of mamals. So it very easy to explain why it is so difficult to get the whole evolution picture within merely a century of mordern anthropoly. There are however significant number of clues that support the theory. In comparison, there is not even one fact of scientifical evidence that GOD exists. So there is not even one clue that is in favour of intelligent design, other than beeing 'created' by religous people desperately trying to seek prove for the existance of GOD. Century after century science calls victory after victory in its battle with religion. A plane flies, not because GOD gave it wings, but only because science makes it so.

>Isn't there room for religion at all. Yes there is, aboslutely. There is lots left to explain that science does not have any handle on (yet?). But a lot of those are questions are of a physics or mathematical nature: Why did the BIG bang occur? What defines chance? Why are the laws of physics the way they are. What is true of life after life. What about our soul beeing able to survive our physical death (something that all religions seem to have in common). What makes a man doing what he is doing?

>What is the social aspect of religion? Well I think religion is particulary important in situations where people search for support and certainly a way to unite people (though there are many bad examples of that as well). So yes, religion is important to certain people. OTOH, we have to watch out to keep science and religion seperated. No-one wants to go back to the mideaval age where witches or other innocent civilians were burned to death in sake of religion, or the extermists that will go so far as killing people or go for terror in the good cause of their religion.

>I'm not religious, but I'll respect anyone for having their own religion. I believe that in any case, science goes first. The gaps can be filled in with religion as you like, until science does.