>As I stated to Mike when he started this thread, you won't find conclusive proof about most of the beliefs of most religions. Faith is a key in just about all religions. If you have proof, you no longer have faith.

I would not disagree with you on that, I did stop short on commenting that if you look for proof then you no longer have faith in your religion.

My response was in answer to Doug's comment that "as far as I know Jim every single time that some geographic or historical incident has been mentioned in the Bible it's been proven out by research.". Starting from the first historical fact in the Bible, AFAIK, no theory of creation has been "proven out by research".

I would also question anybody who says categorically "I don't know how the universe was created, but it is clear it was controlled by a higher force", if you don't know how it happened, how can you state that it was caused by something God like (I am assuming here that by higher force, you/they are refering to some form of sentient force as opposed to an, as yet, unknown force like gravity, electromagnetism etc.)