Is Believing in God Irrational? Ch2 Science and Evolution-produced Religion

This post is inspired by Amy Orr-Ewing's book "Is Believing in God Irrational?" Chapter 2. Please see all the chapters in the post "Is Believing in God Irrational?" for the full picture if you'd like.

Ch2) Is the concept of God delusional? Isn't it outdated by science, based on no evidence, and an evolutionary leftover?
a) Has science dispensed with God? Orr-Ewing dismisses the idea (if someone gave it without evidence) by mentioning Christian scientists. I agree.

b) With scientific explanations for the universe, is God unnecessary? Amy says that science does not have the ability to say anything about God and the matter should be left to other disciplines. Two things come to mind for me: i) First, I believe there are a number of scientific arguments for the existence of God which have not been adequately shut down by atheists. Some of these (TSM in particular) rely on the fact that we cannot explain the universe with science only, namely due to the limits of time, space, and matter complexity. ii) Second, even if the natural universe could be explained (confining natural to that which is usually observed by science), other disciplines with other types of evidence may take their place and perhaps prove or disprove the existence of God. Personally, I tend to categorize science as anything that can be observed in any way, so I would include the inductive evidence of changed lives, miracles, and the like. These, especially miracles, are a sure front in the face of atheistic science.
 
c) Amy cites Dawkins, who says that many Christians present no evidence in their arguments, which rules out proper discussion and ends in violence, whereas people do not go to war based on an absence of belief. She defends the inference to the Crusades by saying that the logical end of Christianity is peace, while Atheists have no basis for it (e.g. Stalin). Here Dawkins is referencing normal, nonviolent atheists while Orr-Ewing is finding violent ones. Here I place a categorical distinction and a claim that everyone believes something. When Dawkins makes his statement, he suggests that all atheists believe the same (all have an absence of belief) and therefore do not go to war. However, atheists are defined only by their absence of belief in God, not as believing nothing, leaving every other belief open. Stalin believed in Marxism and that everyone richer than the common people must be thrown down. Dawkins behaves like a normal American and I have not met him personally, so it is hard to determine what he believes.
Let me go back to the impossibility of believing nothing and support this claim a little more. Perhaps people have different definitions of belief. I define it as whatever is most important to you. Romans 10:10 says "For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified." defining belief as a desire. Believed facts only support the desire. For Christians, we do not only academically believe in the existence of God, but more than that we know he is the most important, desirable person in the universe and so we pursue him at the cost of everything else. For Atheists, if it is not God, then perhaps it is comfort, power, leaving a legacy, knowledge, being seen as smart, family, money, affluence, etc. In Stalin's case it was the victory of the proleteriat.

d) i) Wasn't religion an evolutionary construct to help us form societies? ii) Is it now a disease that religious people indoctrinate their helpless children with?
Orr-Ewing handles this quite well by pointing out the lack of evidence or reasoning behind this idea. For me I see that in the first case, i) the evolutionary construct is merely a plausible explanation for how religion came to be. I accept that is a good explanation that does not seem to have obvious holes. To the mind of the Atheist, this is a good idea to have around, something that fits with the rest of their arguments. However, it does not disprove theism nor present any evidence that our evolutionary history (assuming we have one) did indeed involve the creation of religion. [I have a book that an atheist friend gave me on the subject which I hope to read soon. We shall see if it has evidence or just ideas]. Even supposing religion did evolve, it's evolution does not prove its falsity. In fact, scientists traditionally claim that evolved things tend to be helpful. [Dawkins in his Oct 2008 debate against Lennox used evolution to support the validity of the truth from our brains.] And again, even if they claim evolution did not find a true thing in this case, the fact that it evolved still does not rule it out. Perhaps it found the truth by chance?
ii) Again there is no evidence, no scientific studies on the brains of 'sick' religious people, to prove the malady. On the strain of indoctrination, is it not the same to tell your child something is true as to say it is not? I can see how this may be discouraged if religion was proved false, but again, even if it were proved false, do we not have the right of free speech and ownership of our children so long as we do not abuse them? After all, we tell our children that Santa exists, and would probably not take forceful action against a parent who taught that the sky was green. Though we would have every right handily put them down in books.