Nonsense.

I've never been to Finland, I believe that Finland exists. This is not a 'belief system', let alone a religion. I'm not a Finnlandist.

I look at the evidence, the balance of it is that Finland exists. I look at the evidence, and there's none, absolutely none, zero, less than zero to back up the supernatural claims of Christianity. What happens in the world makes more sense if it's an atheistic universe than a theistic one.

Does God exist like Finland exists? Using 'exists' like every human being except a theologian understands it? The very best thing theists say, the most positive statement they can come up with is 'well, you can't completely disprove that he does exist'. Sorry, it may be arrogant, but if I'm going to pray to something, it's going to have to be something better than the god of the gaps.

Most surviving religions have had to mutate to proclaim it. But a couple of centuries ago, Christianity proclaimed that it was blindingly obvious from looking at the natural world that the only possible explanation for it was Christianity.

All religions now *have* to be mystery religions because the claims they used to make are so easily debunked. Universe six thousand years old? Nope. Thor makes it thunder? Nope. The crops won't grow if you don't rub the idol? Nope. God exists? Ah, but you see 'exists' doesn't have to mean what it does in the dictionary ...

Oh, shush.

Human beings have their senses, their mind and the ability to come up with tools (physical and mental) that help model the world. All we can ever do is come up with ideas and test them.

None of the tests we've come up with so far have located heaven, spotted an angel or whatever. There's more evidence for your precious Martian forest, in that we know Mars exists, we know forests exist. Don't get too excited - this is only the 'genius goat creation' argument in action: it's more likely a brilliant goat created mankind than a god, because we know goats exist and all we need to do is hypothesize a really, really smart one - a fatuous argument, but seeing as page one of what Christians believe says that sin happened because of a talking snake, not exactly the only one in town.

The universe might have been designed to look like it wasn't designed. We might have been designed with the inability to prove it. We can, though, work out that it's a possibility - which suggests that the designer missed a trick. And we can also say that if we're in a fake universe, designed to be dumb, then the designer is definitely not the Christian God of truth.

The point is that religion goes 'hey man, cosmic question' and science goes 'interesting ... let's test'. There are a variety of tests and thought experiments we can apply to see if it's a possibility we're in the Matrix. One, for example, is 'are there any reliable reports of people who've either entered or left the Matrix and seen what's beyond?'. Doesn't matter what the answer is (it's 'no', of course), science doesn't just coo at how interesting the question is, it has a stab at answering it.

It's the old joke - "when they hear hooves, a rational man says it's probably a horse, the sceptic says it's almost certainly a horse but might be a zebra and a religious man tells them both to shut up, they're angering the unicorn".

No ... I don't remember that.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/god

Neither does the dictionary.

'God' is a big word, definitely. Even most theists agree that most of the gods are made up. So let's stick to the Christian one, for sake of argument.

Can you point to the bit of the Bible that says God might not exist? I missed the bit in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus proclaims 'I'm the Son of God, assuming there is one'. How about the bit that says doubt is healthy and that atheists are all part of life's rich tapestry?

I don't support a baseball team. This is not nihilism, it's 'not supporting a baseball team'. While there may be baseball supporters who find it incredible, and wonder what I do with my Saturday (or whatever day it is they play baseball), amazingly I do find other things to do instead.

That's objectively wrong:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

http://www.asa3.org/asa/resources/Miller.html

http://www.rae.org/FAQ01.html

http://www.theistic-evolution.com/transitional.html

Indeed. More to the point, whether we'll ever be able to say for certain or not, and regardless of exact definitions, the universe can't be *both* atheistic *and* theistic. There's either a God involved in the universe or not, it's that simple.

It's heads or tails. No compromise or middle way.

So agnosticism is a sensible *position*, but it's not a sensible *answer*. We can be absolutely sure that the universe itself isn't agnostic.

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.