Steve, I suggest you read the article I posted above. Skip the section on morality and go straight to where it discusses nihilism and epistemology. I think it may help. And Der Terminator, hope you're feeling better soon.

Steve, thank you (though it's just knowledge I've picked up elsewhere). The whole VMAT2 being the 'God gene' is still under debate and isn't accepted across the board (Hamer's study wasn't even published in peer review). Even if we accept that there's a genetic foundation to our belief in God (or lack of), so what? It only becomes deterministic if we <em>a priori</em> assume that determinism is true.

Steve, as a mere pragmatism one can adopt such a moral position, but if physicalism is true one cannot adopt it on rational grounds (see above). Plus, I don't see the innate connection between the limited and finite existence of humans and how that grants them purpose in and of itself (again, I'm speaking in the framework of physicalism). If there is no objective teleology, then one may very well do nothing but play World of Warcraft all day and their life is just as meaningful as the most charitable humanitarian we could find. If there is no intrinsic value, there is no intrinsic value. <em>ex nihilo nihil fit</em>.

I agree that the moral argument for the existence of God is a weak one, and it is precisely because one can simply adopt moral nihilism, which is exactly what I did as an atheist. If you'd like to read a very robust apologetic on this, I'd suggest the link here: http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/the-other-side/

In regards to morality, your missing my point. Again, I know one can take stance such as "killing is wrong" and build moral systems off of that, but for it to be rational it must have an ontological refferent. What your essentially saying is "X is in our best interest because of A, B, and C, therefore we should do Y and Z". It's consequentiallist ethics, and it suffers from the same problem: one need only point out why we ought to value X in the first place, or the justifications of A, B, and C. There is nothing in nature that says humans <em>ought</em> to exist or <em>ought</em> to have intristic value, even if they are predisposed by evolution into thinking they do.

You say evolution provides us the ontological referrent, but it does no such thing. Evolution may explain to us why we prefer certain actions, what their evolutionary history is, but it doesn't give those actions a corresponding value that can be found inherent in nature. No doubt we could say morality as a concept has a basis in evolution, but whether or not the content of that concept is grounded ontologically is a completely different question. We know, for example, that humanity in general is hardwired to have a predisposition to believe in the supernatural, and that certain religious actions are even observed in other species. But certainly, as an atheist, you'd agree that while the concept may have  an evolutionary basis, the content of that concept does not correspond to reality. Why is morality any different? Unless there is some value of "morality" that can be discovered in the fabric of nature and quantified, then morality simply doesn't exist objectively, even if evolution prediposes us into thinking it does (which I'm not even sure that is true since evolution also predisposes us to a slew of things we commonly hold as wrong: rape, murder, stealing, xenophobia, etc).

As for your first point, I'm merely pointing out that Dawkins's argument is very poor, that's all. There's been at least one interesting article written on the topic of burden of proof (though it escapes me at the moment), but again its not the point I was getting at: I was just listing one of the things that wasn't done well by Dawkins, and we seem to be in agreement on his argument, at the very least.

As for history, my very point is that recent scholarship shows that the traditional way we all hear these stories is very different and more nuanced than how they're typically listed off. Yes, the Crusades has religious tensions fueling them, but they also had secular power grabs working during the midst as well (after all, Constantinople was sacked by Christians largely for a power grab whose principal motivations had little to do with religious differences, Catholic and Orthodox scholars agree on this). Galilleo was not nearly the 'Big Bad Roman Catholic Church vs the lone scientist' that has been propagated: but this is my very point, people should read the more recent scholarship. Plus, what about the slew of Christian scientists and mathematicians throughout the ages? Newton, Keppler, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel, Planck, Lemaître, Heisenberg, and that's just to name a few. There have been times where religions have hindered the advancement of science, and there are times where it has advanced it. As for where my faith stands on these issues, I'd rather not talk about it here since such issues are quickly prone to blow up because of the emotional weight they carry. The one I have no problem answering is that Eastern Orthodoxy has no prohibition against one being a theistic evolutionist, which is what I am.

If one is a physicalist and believes that nature is all there is, then that means the ontological grounding for morality must be found within the fabric of nature. The same goes for purpose. But, according to Dawkins, there are no such values, making all moral systems as equally arbitrary and non-rational. One can't just pick a new value, such as (to borrow from Harris) 'the well being of conscious creatures' and build a consequentialist ethic off of that, because once again that value must exist within nature ontologically, and nature simply has no such value. One can ignore this and construct moral or teleological systems, and can even do so for emotional reasons, genetic reasons, social reasons, etc., but they would inherently be devoid of rationality since the only rational grounds for making such systems must exist within nature if one is a physicalist. Of course all of this gets even worse once one factors in determinism.

As you probably know, Sam Harris recently put out a book saying that libretarian free-will is an illusion, and that determinism is true. If physicalism is true, then I believe that Sam Harris is correct (I was a determinist, after all). The problem that Harris doesn't realize is that determinism is a quick snowball into epistemic nihilism. If all beliefs (or lack of beliefs) are predetermined by the antecedent state of the universe, then the positions one holds and the justifications and reasonings behind said positions are merely the result of cause and effect, regardless if said beliefs are true or not. Since there is no way to transcend the universe to examine the different causal chains against others, then unless one takes an unwarranted privleged position, then one cannot know if the knowledge they 'hold' is any more valid than anyone else since all knowledge is pre-determined and not 'held' in the classical, dualistic sense (this last one on free-will was one I discovered after my conversion)