When will religionists realize they've lost?

(If you just want to get to the point and avoid much background bio, read just the first and last paragraphs.)

Now, I am not a philosopher, did not study philosophy in school or in college (took a logic course to satisfy that requirement), and have no formal or informal education in philosophy. What I have are my brains and my experience. I have noticed that in plenty of areas of life I have reached conclusions of personal philosophy about which people spent the time to write complete tomes. Anyone else here experience this?

Like Brent, around the age of 16, I abandoned faith as nonsense. It was a gradual procession throughout life but got a kick start with my father (the ordained, born-again, intermittently evangelical Presbyterian), when I was around 12 years, who said to me with no viciousness mind you, 'I've done what I think is right in bringing you up but you obviously can't accept faith as openly as I have. You have a different path to follow and you need to find that on your own.'

So, I set about doing just that. I set about trying to find answers to the vast multitude of questions I had about faith, belief, the supernatural, etc. In the end, I could not reconcile what I saw and what I felt and what I knew with any sort of supernaturalism. The one sticking point that took me that four years to get through was the fact that I liked who I was, which was/is a very kind, honest person. I feared, most likely based on the biblical upbringing, that I would become a bad person if I abandoned even the search for truth in the supernatural.

About this time, I befriended two girls, who were close friends, who had never gone to church and were not brought up in any kind of belief system. Remarkably, given our society, they had never really given too much thought to it and thought it was all kind of silly. They had not been brought up in atheism, they were brought up in ignorance of religion and had no desire or urges to pursue the supernatural. They were also two of the kindest, nicest, most honest people I had ever met and it was then that I realized that god has no monopoly on being good (my father said, "I could have told you that. I've met more liars and cheats wearing the cloak of god than I can count. I like being with atheists since I don't have to guess motives, I just don't agree with them on one crucial point."). That sealed the deal. I moved on and found freedom, happiness, and intense frustration at the inability of others to not see the evidence around them as exhibiting no support for their faith unless the details are twisted as such (along the lines of Twain, "Figures don't lie but liars figure.").

The more I encountered this forcing of the square peg of evidence to fit the round hole of faith, the more I thought about some more of my father's words, "If you're looking for logic in god, you're engaging in eternal futility. There is no logic in faith."). Which brings me, finally, to my point.

Haven't religionists who try to force the physical world to act as evidence in support of their faith, no matter how wrong a/o twisted is the logic or science behind it, already lost? Faith is not physical. Faith is not logical. By forcing on them physical evidence opposed to the case for faith and forcing them to repudiate that evidence and dive into the material as a way of defending that faith, haven't we essentially forced them to give up the fight? By definition, there is no evidence to be found in the physical world for faith. Why do they have to try so hard when the harder they try the more they knock out the case that their faith is in something real?

(Note: edited to fix a language problem or two)

(Note 2: yes, my father has been paraphrased; I've laid out the gist of the conversations but he doesn't talk like Hollywood Moses)