I'm not going to have a chance to reply in full here because of time constraints, but I wanted to respond in part at least as opposed to with a large delay. So I'll be skipping a bit.



Nobody's done it yet isn't a great standard, particularly while we're still trying to find a bunch of the stuff ourselves. I don't particularly expect anyone to find something of that variety, mind you, but these are all fairly new things.



"Explain" here clearly means accurately predict behavior and describe all functioning, you know that. Weather and psych are probably the two most heavily pondered of such things, and we're making great progress, but we don't have them mastered like we do a steam engine, where one can pretty much describe and predict everything, last I checked anyway.



I'm using 'faith' here as a pretty broad statement, people view it in a lot of different ways, and even an individual might have multiple hazy definitions, that usage is more accurate where religion is concerned. Also, much of what you're saying about religion applies equally to concepts like morality and justice and tons of other things. I'm sure you know that and would agree, but when I said I don't think you require the same level of proof across the board, this what I speak of. It's pretty hard to say something like murder or even genocide is bad without engaging in the same sorts of handwaves you ascribe to religion, yet you are making an ethical argument for gays.



That depends a lot on the religion in question, and again the same thing can be said about a lot of concepts.



You seem to miss the core point there, if the assumption is that science makes people more likely to be atheist, then 'elite' or not, you'd want to know what they believed on Day 1 Year 1 of their scientific studies and what they believe on Day X, ya know, take 1000 random people who just enrolled in college and listed a science major and ask for their affiliation, and ask them again when they graduate, when they get a Ph.D, when they get tenure, etc.



You should probably let Helene defend herself




Again, I feel you limit 'irrationality' to a very narrow focus, marriage isn't itself all that rational, eating meat isn't particularly rational these days, are arguing about this - although we've stayed pretty civil so I suppose we're still debating - isn't too rational either, we're unlikely to change each other's minds and neither is likely to benefit from it. drinking soda instead of water isn't too rational. This stuff isn't a problem for me, because my stance, same as on gay marriage is 'What's it to you?' but yours appears to border on 'destroy religion'... now I hope I'm mis-characterizing you there and you're just expressing a general and legitimate irritation with people who try to smash other over the head, or chop off their head, with their holy book without bothering to seek any additional justification, but it doesn't sound that way, and we've seen plenty of homophobia from atheist societies as I pointed out. There are also plenty of religions that don't give a snot about gays and plenty of denominations of Christianity that are at worst 'a little queasy' on the matter.



That's a pretty broad statement, virtually all law and morality, as I said earlier to either you or Helene, is based strongly around religion, culture and tradition and typically it's impossible to meaningful distinguish which of those. Prior to the Soviet Union, Russia was fairly tolerant of gays, they initially treated it as a medical and scientific oddity then re-criminalized it in the 30's, so it wasn't some old hangover of the old days, and even claimed that if they eradicated gays they'd eradicate fascism, and it used to bring a 5 year prison sentence in the borderline hells that passed for Soviet prisons, pretty much right up until the whole wretched mess finally collapsed. It was illegal in Cuba till the 80's, where marriage is defined as man and woman rather explicitly, so the whole religion as source of gay persecution idea has never held a lot of water in my book. China, another atheist state and one with a generally more tolerant attitude toward gays in it's history, has also not been a cheerful place to be of that orientation, and ha snot legalized gay marriage either.