Evidence for atheist claims

[robvalue]

The thing is, there are two types of "questions" about science. (This has nothing to do with atheism, I think the OP is starting to get that idea.)

1) I don't understand how X works. Could you explain it to me please? (I'm interested in learning. I have an open mind and I'll wait to see if it makes sense to me.)

2) I don't understand how X works. Could you explain it to me please? (I'm not interested in learning, I want to show that science is wrong. I have a closed mind, and I'm going to play a "gotcha" card at any opportunity.)

The big problem with 2, apart from the fact that you're putting up a barrier to ever learning anything, is that you think you can tear down hundreds of years of careful scientific work, based on a summary given to you on a forum, in a subject you don't properly understand. It's extremely arrogant and absurd. Each branch of science is a massive field of study, with loads to learn, where careful conclusions have been drawn based on huge amounts of data. No one, however skilled, can reduce the whole thing to a few words on a forum. Because science deals with what is real, and what actually works and stands up to scrutiny, it takes some actual effort to understand it.

Unfortunately, whenever I see a "question" from a theist about science on here, about 90% of the time I know it's of the second type.

Religious "claims" are almost always nothing to do with reality, and so never come under scrutiny. They're not testable. It doesn't matter how much you "understand" them. Until such time that anyone in the world demonstrates it's anything other than people's imaginations, there is nothing to study. When someone accidentally makes a non-trivial claim about reality that can be tested, it is proved wrong almost immediately every time. You see, people test claims. Anyone with sufficient understanding can test a scientific claim. If there are holes in it, people will find them. Scientific claims have to be falsifiable: there must be ways they can be shown to be wrong. To believe otherwise is to suggest some sort of worldwide conspiracy where everyone who finds the truth is being silenced. Religious claims are generally not falsifiable, which is why they are useless. They are "true" regardless of what results of any experiment may be. So they are nothing but unecessary assumptions.

Science opens a box for everyone to look in. If what's in there doesn't match the description, it's going to become apparent very quickly. Religion tells you about what is inside a closed box.