We're going around in circles, so it's probably futile to go on, but let me try just one last time.
Let's adopt as a null hypothesis that religion is based on a false belief that a supernatural divinity exists, and that religion is, therefore, a waste of energy and resources, that would be better suited for more practical matters.
We would then expect to be able to search history for a people that were able to thrive by abandoning such false and childish thinking. As you say, there are millions of atheists, so surely, somewhere, someone was able to develop a superior civilization, freed from the scourges of religion. Think of all of the labor and resources wasted in the building of temples, and the creation and maintenance of a clergy. But if all known civilizations were religious, wouldn't one have to reject the null hypothesis? It would seem, at the least, that some human advantage has been derived from religion.
And are there really millions of atheists? How can any thinking person think that what we perceive directly by the physical senses is all that there is? From a Paullian perspective, how did we get here? What was the first cause? Science only gets you so far. For example, if you want to say that the Big Bang theory and theory of evolution explains everything, the question remains how did the dense matter at the start of the big bang, come into being? How did the laws of science come into being? How could things just be, with no ultimate cause or raison d' etre? When a Parisian scientist performs an experiment on Thursday, why should we be confident that it could be replicated in London on Saturday? Why should we expect the natural laws to be so consistent and ordered?
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