There is often a disdain for the supposed dichotomy present in religious scientists, who must wall off their faith from their science when it comes to standards of belief Science, in its truest skeptical form, requires all ideas to be questioned and all answers to be corroborated by good evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is said to be embraced because we are told to by tradition, evidence not factoring into the equation. Theology, or its twin cousin, philosophy, is often criticized because we can believe almost anything. Without evidence, all is up for grabs.
I frequently used this argument to defend atheism. And it is hard to argue against, but it is not bulletproof, because within it, there is an inherent assumption that there is no evidence for any religion. There is, of course, plenty of evidence for religion. It could even be said that there is too much evidence, because each religion has its own. The problem is that all of this evidence cannot be true, because it blatantly disagrees with itself. At first glance, the only way to evenly evaluate all of this contradicting evidence is to declare it all equally invalid.
I was convinced this reasoning was right, and in fact, the only moral reasoning. To pick one religion's evidence to be true seemed arbitrary, and picking Christianity would be giving my culture and personal heritage undue significance.
I reiterate these arguments because they were convincing for me and they shaped my rejection of Christianity. I felt I was safe, because I was being fair. Upon meeting God in heaven, I could pull a Bertrand Russell and say, "Well, God, you should have given me more evidence." It would be God's fault.
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