I'll try to explain.

The claims made for the Christian God is that He's everywhere, benevolent and interventionist.

The universe I see looks just like it would if there wasn't a God. Leave aside all the Biblical literalism stuff, within a few centuries, one lot of jumped-up apes have worked out a way in which this universe we see could have happened by simple particles banging together in interesting ways. The more we look into it, the simpler and smaller and less guided the underlying principles seem to be.

Christians don't believe that God created the universe to resemble one that didn't need a divine creator. They believe the exact opposite, in fact.

It's possible that we're blind to it. It's like the most common solution to the Fermi Paradox: all the evidence is laid out in front of us, but we don't recognise it as such. I can believe that ... but at the same time, I pretty much rule that out. Science is proving its worth over and over, it's good at predicting, it's good at providing practical solutions. It's not just asking the same questions theologians have asked for millennia ... in short order, it's solved most of them.

The malevolent matrix idea ... well, you're about three thousand years too late to claim that one as your own. I don't like the idea because ... well, it's arrogant. There is no way you can look at the universe and honestly say mankind is the centre of attention and the reason the cosmos exists. You can't even look at the Earth and say that - to the first approximation, this is a planet of bacteria, nematodes, plankton and grasses.

And this is why the idea that science or atheists are 'arrogant' is so odd: we're not the ones who say the universe was made for our benefit, that we're the image of God, that heaven fell into civil war because of us, that God sent His son to die for (some of) us, that we can measure the consequences of our personal morality in terms of 'eternity'. The grand scheme of things is so much grander than any religion ever dreamed up.

Two bits of sleight-of-hand, there:

You've not used the dictionary definition, you've added the meaningless word 'completely' to it.

Second, 'physical universe'. Most modern theists wouldn't deny the broad sweep of the modern scientific consensus about the physical universe.

However vaguely, however broadly, in practice they would *add* a supernatural element.

Are there any theists here who don't believe in *any* of the following: god or gods had some involvement in the creation of the universe; god or gods had some involvement in the creation of mankind; god or gods can hear prayers; god or gods can affect the outcomes of events; god or gods would like people to behave in certain ways?

I'm an atheist. I don't believe any of those things. I do not believe that the universe has, or has ever had, a god in it. I think that there would be a massive difference between a universe with a god in it (a theistic universe) and a universe with no god in it (an atheistic universe). I have no idea how you'd conclusively prove it was an atheistic universe ... but it ought to be *easy* to prove it's a theistic one, and the finest minds of humanity, given thousands of years, haven't been able to come up with a particle of *evidence*, let alone that proof.

It's almost exactly the same example.

The difference is that something scientists weren't expecting happened. So they analysed it, came up with a couple of working ideas, tested them against what they *did* know. There's now a consensus, but that could be overturned if more compelling evidence comes along. You will not find a single scientist who says 'we know everything that's possible to know about quasars, now'.

Again, though, it's an example of the scientific method working.

OK ... I'm not a theist. Let's get that one clear.

You said that 'part of the definition of God was that his existence couldn't be proven or disproven'.

That's just not true. It is possible to imagine a god whose existence was proven or disproven.

Hypothetically: there is a fertility god, Dave, who lives in the lobby of the Empire State Building. He's three foot tall, speaks in a squeaky voice, is bright blue, never leaves the room, greets every visitor to the Empire State Building and if you bring him candy, there and then he conjures up an elephant for you to take home and makes it rain in your home town. He does this for over a million Americans a year. One of his god powers is the ability to demonstrate unambiguously his divine nature.

Dave is remarkably easy to prove or disprove. And he's exactly the sort of god common in classical times - a local god with specific powers over nature. Like Walmart closed all the mom and pop stores, Yahweh's closed down all the little gods.

No. We had evidence planets orbited stars - we're on one of them.

The question was how common that was, and scientists were divided on it. There may have been scientists who believed that there were no other planets at all, but most predicted that there would be many, based on what we did know. Then scientists worked out a way to observe planets orbiting other stars, predicted what would happen, then they discovered them.

No 'faith' involved - a simple example of defining the problem, working out a way to solve it, solving it. A perfect example, in fact, of the effectiveness of the scientific method.