[john70t]

Rick, I'm agnostic, not atheist, and try to keep a bit of skeptisism and optimism towards everything.

My views on organized religeon were formed young with the knowledge of the politicism and anti-sciencism of it all.
For instance, a friends father was a holy-roller minister and "laid hands" on my head shouting "devil begone from this child" when we met. They would have old people over, and speaking-in-tongues circles, and then talk of "renewing the will" (if you know what I mean). My friend had all his Star Trek items thrown out because space aliens are demons. Etc, etc...

Throughout history, religeon has always suppressed science because science is a universal knowledge independant of any type of social hierarchy or economic leverage (untill it's used to manufacture goods), and which often contradicts the Bibles teachings of physical reality and above all challenges the church-states power system.
Copernicus, DaVinci, and thousands of others in the past who helped make this global communications system a reality found this out the hard way.

I am sure there is a grain of truth in everything though.
Supposedly there is evidence of an earthquake around the time of the exidous which would have created a low tide-tsunami effect. Many references probably had a very real basis.
Supposedly there was a study done showing that people who were prayed for healed faster (I'm sure there were a lot of other mitigating factors though).
physical matter is comprised of energy that can be transfered, so the scientific provability of the "spirit" is not that farfetched.

Not many modern Bible-Literalists have sacrificed animals or killed their children for swearing though.
The Bible was written by people a couple of millenium ago and times were indeed very different.