I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here and refute some of your arguments. The simple reason for this, is that if there is one thing that Bluemoon Off-Topic has taught me over the years, it's that people's faith is unnecessarily bastardised for the enjoyment of a few; something that I've been quite a large voice in, and it's a little unfair on them to say "PROVE YOUR GOD EXISTS!!~". To the general populace on here, admitting you are a faithful person is paramount to saying you're a idiot, and that's out of order.
Anyway, as you probably know, I'm a slave to logic, so I'll use this to counteract the claims that have been made.
1. Religion has caused more suffering than anything else
This is false, and shows a bias in the reading of historical events. Yes, certain wars have been religious, but a number of them (including the two biggest last century which killed more than any) weren't. I would say that culture clash has caused more suffering than anything else. Communism vs Capitalism vs Fascism was the new cultural imperialism; before this, the British, before this, the French/Spanish, before that the Persians/Ottomans, before this the Romans, before this the Norse, etc.
Wars are fought for territory and for resources, to extend the power of a certain nation. Whether they were religious or not is irrelevant. People used to find allies through similar cultures, which extends in to similar religious beliefs. That said, Christians still invade Christian countries, and have done since the dawn of time.
The whole Civil War in Britain is an often used religious war excuse, and especially the actions of Henry 8th, Queen Mary, etc.
Again, at the root of this, you have a single monarch who wants to increase their powerbase. It's very rare in history to find a person who wants to conquer based entirely on religious aspects.
2. God causes more pain than the Devil
Presuming that these two actually exist, there is no verifiable way of saying who caused what to happen, therefore the whole argument is mute.
3. The Bible is just too much of a fantastical story to be true.
Again, the logic in this is heavily flawed. If I were to travel back two thousand years and explain posting on an internet forum to a man, they would say that it was too fantastical to be true. The historical accounts at the time support a person known as Jesus. This is all again presuming that the Bible is literally true.
We have no real way of knowing the events of Nazareth/Jerusalem around this time, as proper historical documentation doesn't particularly exist, most was passed through word of mouth and then written later. Yes, this introduces the possibility of bias, but the possibility of bias and actual bias are two different things.
4. The Bible was written by journalists, which makes it unreliable
This is akin to saying that 9/11 was reported by journalists, therefore didn't happen.
5. Scientific standards don't apply to scripture
I'm surprised at this assumption. Scripture has some real hardcore scientists examining them, dating them, translating them etc. It isn't easy to translate a dead language, and compromises have obviously being made from the original to English. There is a whole argument that states that the Virgin Mary was never a Virgin in the original scripture, and was actually just 'young' which was mistranslated. Again, it's an ongoing process of translation and knowledge, and the real religious scientists are doing their best to get the intended story out there. It isn't their fault if Christian sects don't accept it, or whatever.
6. Physics supports the assumption of a Creatorless universe.
This is a personal bug bear of mine actually, and I can never see where people come from with this. In Physics, there is a rare term used known as a Singularity. A Singularity is an event that happens where
some laws of physics break down, and cause-effect rarely exists. The Big Bang is probably the most well known Singularity, but others such as Black Holes.
Actually, that's a bit of a simplified answer, which doesn't do it justice. What I should say, is that a singularity is where the variables in an equation reach infinity, and there is no such thing as infinity in Physics, thus it breaks the known laws.
Anyway, the point being that nobody on Earth can prove what happened at the moment of creation. We know what happened several billionths of a second after it, and can follow it all the way through to now. However, the exact moment of creation is unknown to all, and if you have an answer for it, you better buy a suit as you'll be receiving a Nobel Prize.
There is a space for a creator within physics. Not just the moment of creation but the formation of the laws too. For example, we know that Pi is always the ratio between a circumference of a circle and the diameter (well, in Euclidean geometry anyway), Why is this? Doesn't it seem funny that we have a bunch of constants in the Universe? The Gravitational constant is a bloody good one, as well as things like the Divine proportion or Phi.
The Divine proportion for those unaware, is 1.6180339887. This is a number that appears just everywhere in nature and in the galaxy. There is also a large amount of sacred architecture that conforms to this ratio.
Again, there is room for faith within this equation, and discounting it entirely is a little close minded.
7. God doesn't exist because the Vatican is evil.
There's no real logic behind this. Discounting the Christian God, just because some of his followers are idiots, is like saying that all humans are paedophile murderers because Ian Huntley exists.
8. The below statement
1. He creates us (limited as we are)
2. He wants us to a)acknowledge him and b) to accept and worship him
i) If you do a) and b) you will be rewarded.
ii) If you do not do a) and b) you will be sent to Hell (or in a state of Hell - either way, it's everlasting torment)
3. To be able to do b) you must first do a)
4. God hides himself from us and gives no reason whatsoever to believe this scripture( in this case the Bible) over another.
5. It's already established that the Christian God is a dictator
6. Thus the Christian God is fictitious or, at the very least, evil (ie. a bad dictator/tyrant)
We'll discount the perfectly valid arguments of translations, cultural shifts, power mongerers and the like and say that everything you've said is true.
There is utterly nothing to support assumption 6 from previous assumptions. You've missed lots of steps.
