“For me, I need strong evidence to start developing a belief in such a nebulous idea as a deity”
Socialism and its variants, communism and fascism, are the political expressions of atheist and secular humanist worldviews. Your statement says a lot about your true beliefs.
Yea right. First, I'm not an atheist. Second, I'm as far from a communist and fascist as you can get. Third, making assumptions that mix politics and religion is always a dumb move. I could go on for pages about how numerous Christian faiths in the US are left-wing and actually socialist in their beliefs. The National Council of Churches is just one of many examples.
http://www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000003620.cfm
Or the Unitarians
http://jmahoney.com/liberal_family_churches.htm
And all the rest of the MANY left-wing churches
http://www.cultureandfamily.org/articledisplay.asp?id=492&department=CFI&categoryid=cfreport
I submit that the reason that the Communists and Fascists didn't care for religion is because it organized people in groups, which could amass resistive power, rather than their tenets themselves.
Just because someone is not a deist does not make them a communist or a fascist. That type of attack is an example of the "intellectual laziness" that Ronaldus Magnus Reagan and I were talking about.