Atheist!

I have been reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It is a famous book and espouses the premise that God does not exist, as it cannot be proven by scientific methods. A simplistic explanation of a wordy tome which does not do it justice.  I am not writing to review it, so if you want to know what it is fully about, buy a copy and read it!
As it happens, he is, in my case, "preaching to the converted". 
I have been an atheist from as early as I can remember. I may have attended some religious education when I was small and attended organised religious services but I instinctively felt from the early age that a supreme being was not something I could believe in or all the religious ceremony and teachings that went with it . Of course I was far to young to understand any of the arguments and certainly had no conception of Atheism.
My attitude has never changed and indeed as I became more educated and found out more about the world and the myriad of religions that existed (some have actually come into being in my lifetime!) my view only strengthened. I will not in this scribbling go into any one religion or any of the established debates, about how much death and devastation religion has caused, nor am I going to enter the well known path of creationism and evolution. These are subjects that far more educated and wiser men and women than me, have written about and discussed for decades. Just so you know I nail my colours firmly to evolution. 
This is my view, how can anyone espouse the existence of a God (whichever one it is) when there is absolutely NO evidence to support that existence. Faith alone, for me, is not sufficient to sustain a belief in a supreme being, with no proof. For me it is obvious, like all natures creatures we live and then we die, end of story. 
Naturally I understand humans desire to believe that there is something more once they die and perhaps there is even a need programmed in the brain. This need for something greater than what we have is an understandable one, it is natural for humans to call upon a greater force in order to help them get through bad time, good times and their daily lives. 
Early humans can be forgiven for believing in all sorts of diverse "Gods", for many separate purposes but we now live in the 21st century, we are more educated and understand better than at any time in history the nature of the universe. In all of the vast research and scientific discovery that humans have made there is not one shred of proof of a supreme being, none!
I am an atheist and I would like to see  this debate out in the open? Why does religion have this precious protection, that cannot be critiqued, why can people not be blasphemous? Why is my right to preach what I believe any less important than religion? If religion is really secure in it's beliefs why can it not be questioned? Why am I asking all these rhetorical questions?
If anybody can ever prove to me the true existence of a supreme being, I will eat my words gladly and be delighted to accept that I am wrong! However I have been alive for almost 60 years and I seriously, seriously, doubt such a thing will come to pass.

Just as an aside. One of my pet hates about spell checkers on the Internet is that they are american english! I am English and speak and write the english language in it's proper mother tongue!