> I've used the same level of scrutiny on religion as on science -- an extremely evidential approach, I might add -- and yet I have become more religious rather than less.

What evidence did you find to make you more religious? I ask out of genuine curiosity - one or two examples would be great.

> Given your assumption that the Bible would normally be interpreted literally

You've misread. I assumed that a Bible thumper would interpret the Bible literally (since you were using it as an example of a logical extreme). Perhaps I am in error in that case. But, no, I don't assume that the Bible is interpreted literally normally.

> You would do well to expand your horizons to a broader cross-section of the religious community before making such sweeping generalizations about "the processes to be religious".

I admit that is a generalization but I'm not sure if it's sweeping. You say that it's possible to use evidence to support religion, but I hold that this can only happen if someone erroneously interprets the evidence, as humans (all humans, religious or not) have a tendency to do. That's why we have the scientific method to keep our ideas in check. Religion bypasses the scientific method and it's not an accurate description of the universe because of this reason.

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I searched for your username and "falsifiable":

The first area of concern is that you seem to believe that god can communicate with people, including you (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2963530). I would be curious to know what mechanism is used to do this, and why you think it's more plausible than your own brain communicating with yourself.

The second concern is this:

> Now, if one person who I trust is His follower says "God told me X", and then X is wrong, the theory would be disproved -- so the theory is falsifiable.

Based on this quote, I severely doubt that you apply the same level of scrutiny to religion as you do to science, as you claim. There are several problems with this statement:

1. How to validate that someone is a "follower" of god.

2. How to validate that the person is telling the truth about what they were told.

3. How to validate that the person received a metaphysical message from god (whatever what means) rather than a hallucination. This is one point where falsifiability breaks down because I'm fairly certain that metaphysical events are unfalsifiable (since we can't analyze them "outside" the universe).

4. Even if these validations were made, I guarantee that most religious people would try to claim that god was just testing their faith, or something similar. People do this all the time when errors in the Bible are pointed out, or if a prayer isn't answered, and so on. In that sense, it still isn't falsifiable.

This is why we don't build our understanding of the world based solely on human intuition. It just isn't accurate because the universe is not a human. It's just reality. It doesn't share any of our assumptions or ideals or desires, and projecting them onto the universe to try to divine some cosmic purpose is a mistake.

I contend that nothing you've brought up is sufficient evidence to justify religion as a correct belief to hold. In fact, I'd argue that the amount of assumptions and intuitions that religion presents as truth is good reason to shed it as it seems to make it very hard to analyze it objectively.