Jayna, thanks for the compliment. Like you I do have a problem with religion when it starts to cause harm to others. I believe that in our society it has caused harm, restraining the teaching of evolution, restricting scientific research, justifying mistreatment of those that do not believe in the dominant religion, etc.

To prove or disprove the existence of something, you must first define what that something is. “God” is not simply an intelligent creator of the universe, “God” is purported by Christians (at least) to be so much more.

Proof that “God”, by Christian definition, does not exist.
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Premise 1) “God” desires salvation for Mankind.
Premise 2) “God” wishes to send a directive message crucial to the salvation of Mankind.
Premise 3) “God” is capable of sending counterfeit-proof messages to Mankind.
Premise 4) A precondition for salvation is that Mankind receive and understand “God’s” directive message.
Premise 5) There are many messages in the world that falsely purport to be of “God”.

From P 4 and 5: The salvation of Mankind depends on our ability to differentiate between genuine messages of “God” and phony messages.

To do this in a world full of false messages (P5), it’s necessary for “God” to send a message uniquely attributable to “God” (i.e a message in a form immune to human counterfeit).

The fact that Mankind has not received a coherent directive message uniquely attributable to a non-human source, much less uniquely attributable to “God” is positive evidence that “God”, by definition (P1-4), does not exist.

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The only first message and commandment that we could logically expect a competent and non-mischeivous god to make is: “I will never send a messenger, only believe and follow what I tell you directly”.

In a world full of false prophets who with words and writings claim falsely to speak for “God”, the idea that “God” exists, is capable, but chooses to send commandments through human intermediaries (holy books and prophets) anyway, makes about as much sense as the idea of a treasury department which can print counterfeit-proof money, but chooses to print money that is susceptible to counterfeit anyway; even worse, a treasury that continues to print copies of bills known to have already been counterfeit! If a treasury had the means, we would expect it to exclusively print counterfeit-proof money. To do otherwise would be mischievous and/or stupid.

Essential to the preservation of authority, is the principle that subjects of authority MUST reject commandments not provided in certified form, and as such, a lack of obvious and irrefutable evidence that a directive originates from “God” is actually proof positive evidence that the directive could not possibly originate from “God”.