Well, people can believe that there is evidence for deity, but there isn't. I very carefully do *not* say that people can believe in deity, but there aren't any. There just isn't anything that is actually evidence (in the jargon sense of replicable data).

That is why so many people are giving up their faith, now that we have explanations for all the phenomena we didn't used to understand, and so used deityh as an agency-based explanation. Again, in the jargon sense of Agency, which means something being done BY something/someone whenever there is a happening. Not everything that happens is caused *by* someone/something who *intended* it to happen, on purpose.

And agency-based explanations for non-agency phenomena (it isn't an agency who "put" the rainbow in the sky, rainbows happen because of physics, no agency involved) is childish. That is how developing minds understand the world until they mature enough to realize that not everything is agency-caused.

I understand that as we evolved, we would have had to go through a stage of agency-based explanations for natural phenomena; all cultures who experience thunder had thunder gods; all cultures who have seasonal change have myths explaining how deity made it that way (Persehone, or whatever). None of those explanations held up to reality once we started understanding reality, and developed science and actual knowledge about physics, chemistry etc.

BUT, because of the invention of *religion* (separate from the concept of deity), the idea of deity remains as a valued explanation for why you need someone to intercede between you and your deity, or to explain what deity really wants from you; since people don't deal deirectly with their concept of deity if they are in a religion, the power lies with the interceders and the explainers, not the worshippers. The evolutionary advantage of religion accrues to the explainers and interceders more than, if not instead of, the worshippers.

So it's time for humanity in general to outgrow the need for deity to explain reality, which will take all that power away from the explainers/interceders and give it back to those regular people, no longer worshippers. Imagine all the savings to humanity of people had to really accomplish things instead of relying on being supported for explaining/interceding between the unknown but posited to be very powerful (be afraid! Be very afraid!) agency to credulous people!