"The bottom line is if you staunchly believe in evolution than no matter what is presented it will not be seen as valid at any level. There really is little middle ground."
That depends on a person's reasons for the belief. If a person believes because the evidence supports evolution, then chances are that same person will believe in a new, better theory if new evidence supports it. At the moment the evidence supports evolution. Scientists can demonstrate and teach it to anyone who is willing to study it and they will even teach you how to never just accept anything and to always strive for better answers.
If you believe in evolution just because your highschool science teacher told you so, then it might be correct that you are believing it on faith. You'd happen to be correct, but still it's only faith. But once you see how the principles of evolution affect our everyday lives by way of how it is implemented, saying one has to have faith in evolution is like saying one has to have faith in electrons. You can see the result of our understanding of the electron on the very monitor you are reading and you can see the result of our understanding of evolution in something like your flu shot.
"In the end both beliefs (Evolution or Intelligent Design) are a matter of faith since there is no empirical proof for either in regard to how the universe came to be."
Although I hope you understand that evolution has absolutely nothing to do with how the universe began. It is an entirely separate field of study and they are in no way related whatsoever. Evolution only has evidence that supports what it explains about the universe. To say evolution doesn't explain the beginning of the universe is like saying the rules of baseball don't tell you how to use a dishwasher.
"but the fact remains there is no proof. If there were this would not be a debate, would it now."
A person's inability to understand something does not make that something false. It simply means they have not been appropriately educated in that something. But if that person does not want to study that something and instead insists on asserting an alternate idea, then there will be debate. The only way to reach the answers that most likely resemble reality is to go over the evidence and see which claim best describes observation.
"Take the classical and utterly ridiculous argument that the human eye is too complex and therefore proves the existance of god."
Better still, the human eye is so poorly 'designed' that you'd almost think that the 'creator' didn't care for us to have decent vision at all. Instead 'he' thought that honour should befall the octopus and the owl.
"it seems to me that atheism is like a stubborn teenager, and indeed it seems to be the trend for 15-year olds here.
I considered myself as atheist five years ago, but I find that I actually have gotten some sort of belief back. Or rather, I believe in the doubt, because it most likely will be an endless discussion, but I don't really like the idea of clinging too much to the atheism thing, because you might lock yourself in, and close your eyes to some aspects of life."
The problem there is that this is almost trying to assign a personality to atheism or equate it to a belief system, or as some falsely say a religion in itself. Atheism is only the rejection of theistic claims. Any worldview an atheist has outside of this basic rejection of theism has nothing to do with Atheism. Atheism isn't meant to be anyone's compass if they're feeling lost, it's not meant to answer life's question, it is only a simple statement to say you don't believe others' claims of god.
I for example don't wear atheism on my sleeve as a badge. I hardly mention it at all. The important issues are theistic claims, whether they are true and whether they are harmful. My lack of belief in theism is actually irrelevant to this end. One can seek answers to so-called spiritual matters and still be atheist.
"This all Boils down to the existance of God, which (admittedly) cannot be Directly proven by scientific means."
But doesn't that mean that something not of science should not be taught in a science classroom, which is really the original point of the thread? Also, theistic claims can be disproven scientifically. Theistic claims are supported by books with various claims of events that have happened and their god's interactions with humans. If the bulk of the best historic literature does not agree with these events or if no evidence can be found via scientific means, then a claim can be reasonably dismissed in the same way we can dismiss any piece of literature.
On top of this certain gods can be disproved philosophically. In the Christian traditions there are things like the 'problem of evil' and several others that can disprove the god out of existence due to their own claims about their deity's attributes.
Okay, I've a couple more pages to get through and comment on since I last visited, and I'll be sure to do that, but I need to get me some pizza before I start babysitting Aliasalpha's sorry butt in some Splinter Cell Conviction co-op.