What do believers say when you ask or tell them..

[Frank]

Sometimes us atheists have fun just regurgitating our same old arguments (maybe rephrasing them slightly to be a little more punchy). Debunking religion really is a completed task, scientifically speaking (sort of like algebra) ... finished long ago. Just because apologists come up with new ways of spinning their same old nonsense doesn't mean we need to revisit the drawing board (it just means they're fools wasting their time on a worthless occupation).

...No? if you can honestly show me scientific evidence which 'debunks' religion, I will be thoroughly impressed. I don't mean to get snarky, but you are making an incredibly broad claim here, and it needs to be backed up. You may have debunked certain interpretations or ideas about religion, but the central theme of most religions is...God. And you have not debunked God in the slightest.

Science isn't really valid here (because there's nothing scientific to examine). This is merely an analysis of the veracity of fantastic ancient claims; and of course with regard to anything of this nature pertaining to the remote past, the best we'll do is debunk it beyond a reasonable doubt (and of course even if we discovered a way to build a wormhole back in time, traveled back and showed that Jesus' followers stole his body, or whatever ... it still wouldn't appease many theists).

You're trying, I guess, to distinguish between the concept of god and religiosity (which is fine dude, I did the same thing for a while); but where did the concept of god come from? The evidence shows the concept comes from mythology. Sure there's a bunch of post-hoc arguments that try and provide proof for god apart from religious claims (e.g. cosmological arguments like Kalam and others). However, our starting place should be to realize these are post-hoc attempts to justify a preexisting belief system (and that's just not how science works).

If I find a book describing a legend of pink unicorns, and I try to formulate a logical argument that shows the possibility (even the probability) that pink animals could have existed at some point in the past (because I started to worship the pink unicorn), how seriously would you take me?

That's interestingly something I was not aware of! I don't know too much about Norse mythology other than the bare minimum, Thor, Odin, all that stuff. Kinda cool.

Although, the reason I bolded part of that snippet is because I find it strange that it was okay for Vikings to lack scientific knowledge and theorize about 'gods' to explain it, but it was not okay for, say, the writers of the Bible to lack scientific knowledge and attribute scientific occurences to God. Just pointing that out.

Remember I'm not saying Norse mythology is true (indeed I'm sure it's untrue). What I find admirable is they were some of finest warriors in history - yet had no expectation of any reward (in fact they were sure they would ultimately lose).