I was hoping to have a serious, perhaps celestial discussion, mainly because I knew it would get polluted with the usual sideshow antics. But here goes...
This might come as a disappointment, but I do not have any religious claims to make aside from my belief that a God exists. Why should I feel obligated to go beyond the evidence? I've said this on other occassions, and it seems to frustrate many an atheist. I'm not sure why. Maybe it is because they had certain straw men set in their minds, and my lack of relgious convictions took the wind out of their sails. I've never once tried to convert anyone here to any particular religion, quite simply because I myself don't belong to one.
What information, knowledge or facts about the world is available by specifical religious means that is not available to the nonreligious and is not accounted for without religious or supernatural assumptions.
Well, I am not sure what you mean by religious "means." I'm not particularly religious. I don't attend a Church. I don't read scriptures. I don't even pray anymore, really. But wil try to touch on some of the things that has convinced me God exists.
I do believe a God has been providing "revelation" to humans throughout history. By revelation I mean knowledge of his/her/its existence and a sense of purpose in the world. Religious people tend to cling to religon becase it makes them happier. And generally speaking, they are happier because of it. The problem is that with religion comes the negatives of any organized system of belief; authority, dogma, ritual, social outcasting, loyalty, obligation, blind devotion, degrees of control, etc.
I think I understand scriptures well enough to accept them for what they are. None of them are infallible. The people who wrote these books were just men trying to make sense of their own religious experiences in print. Most of the content is fluffy literature written for purposes that have nothing to do with our times. I believe the existence of modern religions is the natural result of humans trying to make sense of God's existence in a systematic manner over the course of several thousand years. It could be that one of them is true and the rest false, but I think it more likely that all of them have truths and all of them also have falsehoods and none of them is the "one" true Church. The one thing they have in common is the premise that got them started to begin with; a knowledge that something greater than themselves exists and it/he/she is responsible for our present reality.
As far as what religion gives us that atheism can't, well that would be coming off as presumptuous so I prefer to just look at history to note what it has given us that atheism didn't. It is easy to say moral systems can exist without religon, but the simple fact is most of our modern moral principles derive from ancient religion. I've heard some atheist refer to the Greeks who had their own system similar to Utilitarianism, but in Greek culture humans were not equal and it was considered moral for men to sexually molest boys who they would repay with intellectual wisdom. It is hard to see how the universal standard today, that all human life is sacred and created equal, could have been implemented without a religious basis. There is certainly no reason to think science could have given us this moral principle. In fact science gave us Darwinism and Eugenics which tells us we are not equal. It tells us we're nothing special at all. We're just animals who evolved a different way. Our sense of purpose and sense of morality is just a delusion we created for ourselves. Even our consciousness is a delusion. Survival of the fittest. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. You get the point. I find atheism to be a miserable alternative, and my interactions with atheists have done nothing to change that perception. Not because I am fearful of a nonexistent hell or look forward to rewards, but because I cannot ignore my own religious experiences and blow them off as delusion. And then there is also the matter of teleological evidence that no atheist has been able to address. Dawkins tried, but failed miserably. How does science explain the common values of the universal constants? Why are they as they are? How did religion know the answers to these questions thousands of years before science figured them out? The earth turns out to be central to the universe after all, the universe turns out to have been created after all, etc. These ancient writers were clearly correct on these issues, so I can only explain it as evidence that they also received revelation from God. These arguments proved persuasive to many atheists, including one career atheist Antony Flew. So it is simply false to assume religous people are always religious based on "unjustified belief." There are reasons, even if you don't accept them.
I'm reluctant to get into the morality argument that you raised becase it always gets misunderstood, but I think a decent case can be made. Why do humans act altruistically? The act flies in the face of Darwinism. There is simply no evolutionary advantage or benefit to its practice, and yet we do so because we have a very different sense of morality than the rest of creation. Where does it come from? Is it one of the poorly understood laws of the universe like gravity?
In short, what is the content and how shall it be separated, in a principled way, from other religious claims which Dart perhaps doubts (like demon possession, Kolob, Heavenly Mother, etc.)
In short, science tells us what things are, and how they operate, whereas religion expains why they are. Not so much in scientific explanations but in manner that makes sense to most humans and provides them with a sense of happiness.
The content you refer to, well that varies in degree with each person, according to his or her religious experiences. Again, if you're expecting me to offer a systematic religion according to Kevin, well you're going to be disappointed. For me it is enough to know God exists and to know I am a unique and central species in his/her/its creation. But I am just starting this journey, so I suspect there will be more to come.