I was never a religious person. I used to go to church when I was little, but I never felt a strong connection with Christianity. In late elementary school I became interested in Science and Astronomy and with years of reading, I came to the conclusion that I didn't believe in any sort of deity.

Scientific belief's are based on scientific results. And it really was more of a feeling that a factual claim he was making.

Important ones yes. Grand theories or ideas need to be backed up the more extravagant they are.

If someone tells me they have a Dog I do not need to ask for evidence as I know owning dogs is a common thing among humans.
If someone tells me that Evolution is correct and that animals have been changing overtime to suit the environment, I would need evidence (which is easily available)

If someone tells me the continents are moving I would ask for evidence (which is easily available)
If science claims the universe began with an initial expansion from a single point in space then I would ask for evidence and they would provide.

If someone is claiming that the universe was created by a timeless intelligent being then I would ask for evidence, if it cannot be provided I cannot accept this grand claim. I'm not saying they're wrong I'm saying it would be foolish to accept any grand claim without a shred of evidence. If there was 0 evidence for Evolution, you can believe it but it wouldn't be justifiable on any logical basis EVEN THOUGH you would be correct to believe it.

Yet most of his peers felt that the results showed an inherent uncertainty not some yet-unknown hidden factors. And you are precisely right, this belief of his is based off of a feeling not on facts alone. 

I figured I'd elaborate on this, because it covers my view well, and I might be able to provide a slightly different way of thinking about it.

What has been described is "Scientific Atheism" (and I'd describe my position as scientific atheism, too). It's rooted in the same principles that all scientific discovery operates under - you formulate a falsifiable hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis, searching for evidence contradicting it. If a hypothesis isn't falsifiable, it has no value, as there is no way to determine whether it is right or wrong.

As it is not possible to prove nonexistence of something (try to prove that there isn't a teapot floating somewhere in space between the earth and the moon), existence isn't falsifiable. So the hypothesis we test is "there is no god". And so, we seek evidence contradicting that statement. And scientific atheists generally have not been presented with evidence (that is in any way convincing) contradicting it.

Of course, there is also the classic saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - basically, it's not enough to point to something, go "that is a lot less likely if there is no god than if there is one", and call it a day. Extremely unlikely event happen all the time, because the total number of events is extraordinarily massive. An event that happens exactly once across all time has a probability of 0, yet happens. And this is why it's so hard for a scientific atheist to be convinced of the existence of a deity - the sheer number of other plausible explanations make it very hard to disprove the nonexistence of god (you can disprove nonexistence, as far as physical "proof" goes, by observing something's existence). It will take more than a list of "miracles".

To demonstrate why, consider two examples of "miracles" that actually have solid scientific explanations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Mumbai_sweet_seawater_incident
Water in a particular river in Mumbai suddenly turned sweet, drawing massive numbers of people to drink the water. And indeed, the normally salty water had turned sweet. Seems like a miracle, right? As it turns out, fresh water from an area with rocks that produce a sweet flavour had made it into the river when the rocks had cracked (releasing the stored fresh water), and the fresh, sweet water floated on top of the salty water (before it had had a chance to mix). Meanwhile, many who partook of that water ended up with gastroenteritis due to the various bacteria and toxins in the river.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_milk_miracle
Hindu statues exposed to milk at their various trunks, etc, seemed to "drink" the milk. Turns out, it was capillary action drawing the milk out of the various receptacles, and they could trace the milk's path using coloured milk (coloured with food dye). So what seemed miraculous was just physics at work.

There are many more, but I don't want to make this too long. Other "miracles" of this sort have turned out to be hoaxes (almost all instances of "weeping statues" have turned out to be faked - most of the remainder have other scientific explanations that have been confirmed, leaving few without certain explanation).

Which naturally begs the question - are the unexplained "miracles" really done by a deity? Or are they unexplained because we don't know everything about the universe in terms of physics, chemistry, etc?

Scientific atheists generally consider most beliefs in deities to be cases of "god of the gaps" - basically, "we can't explain it, so it must be god". The same reasoning led to early human civilisations having a god of fire, a god of water, etc. As they grew more sophisticated, so too did the gods - god of fertility, god of war, etc. And as science explained more things, the number of gods dropped... now it's just one (in the western world - in the east, other religions are still polytheistic).

I would propose that scientific atheists are not worried about the unknown. We don't fear the unknown, we revel in it, because it means there is more for us to discover. We aren't afraid to say "I don't know", and don't try to come up with explanations before we have evidence or justification on which to base those explanations. We don't assume that spontaneous remission is due to god, we look for evidence of a cause (and science is slowly, but surely, unravelling explanations for it). It works exactly the same as how science itself works - hypothesise, then attempt to disprove hypothesis.

On the risk of detouring off topic, this is also why most scientists have a problem with "climate change denialists". They don't start with a falsifiable hypothesis. To be falsifiable, it has to be exact. "Human-related emissions of CO2 are causing the climate to change, increasing average temperatures" is an exact concept. "Something else is causing the climate to change" is vague. And when they do come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, they aren't interested in evidence contradicting their hypothesis ("sun spots cause climate change" - nope, extensive investigation has shown that it couldn't possibly explain it, but you won't hear the denialists admit it).

Of course, we're not going to be so arrogant (generally - I'm not going to speak for Dawkins, who I have little respect for) as to suggest that belief must be wrong. Religion and science exist in different thought processes. I do not claim that scientific reasoning is superior, just that it works for me. If you wish to consider certain "miracles" to support your view, you won't hear me complain (unless there's a solid scientific explanation, of course - same as how you wouldn't call "I found my keys" a miracle). Just realise that when you attribute the unknown to god, your thinking isn't the only possible way of thinking on the issue.

- I don't disagree with this, as my beliefs are based on rational expectations. I can see how certain religions get around this though. For example, in Christianity the evidence is based on experential knowledge. People literally "experience" god. There have been studies that show that people who are religious have certain portions of their brain active which induce the feeling of being watched or that somebody is in the same room as them. So to them, god isn't a billion miles away, but in constant contact. They can't quantify it, but they do experience it. And that is why they surmise it to be true for them. It has only been recently that we can explain through science the experience they have, and for that reason it is hard to convince people that what they are experiencing is just a trick of how their brains work. 

-  Yet scientists subscribe to tons of metaphysics. Multiverse theories, whether or not aliens exist, and whether or not mathematics is real or just human modeling are very frequent exisistential (questions about existence) questions scientists try to address, in many cases without testing said theories (in example, Enrico Fermi concluded that aliens likely do not exist because we haven't met them yet many scientists believe in the existence of intelligence alien life.) I can name dozens of existential philosophies scientists subscribe to. 

- I was mostly addressing this point you made way back. 

"It's sad that people will suspend reason and common sense when it comes to the question of religion more than anything else. ."

"There are really smart people I know that come off as reasonable 99% of the time but when it comes to religion they seem to throw reason and common sense out the window."

It isn't just religion that these (or all) people suspend reason for. The things these physicsits and biologists make exisistential statements for are not testable claims, so they can't really "devotes herself to proving the point and not claiming it's true simply based on those feelings." We cannot test a multiverse and likely never will, for example, yet many believe in its existence (myself included.) It makes sense logically, but so do many things. 

That is because we are not "all in you face" about it. Theres no magic book to tell us what to do. We just dont care to "spread the word". We accept that it is the logical conclusion and whoever wants to see it, will see it. :)

Simply, I do not see any evidence for the existence of a deity nor do I really have a reason to believe in one. If people do, that's fine with me but personally religion just doesn't really appeal to me .

Because: "Why not?"

There will always be a question unanswered and there is no way to get all the answers.