faster? you mean like...light to light, go through the gears, side by side? the guy with the manual trans is a busy boy. equal cars arrive equal at the next light. the guy with the automatic saves gas because his throttle opening is constant, his changes in rpm are fewer, and he's the one smiling watching the other guy give it all that effort. similar camaros tried it one night while i watched they were within a few feet of one another every time. there was obviously more wear and tear being done to the manually shifted car. but they arrive at the same time

If your racing then yes. With normal driving, stick is just a tad faster.

Well, that's kinda a tricky question. First, it depends on who is driving them. Second, it depends on the transmissions. For instance, you take a standard truck trans with large internal gears and it is slow as smoke shifting between gears. Then there's the auto's with manual or auto valve bodies. If you got a governor on the valve body that makes it shift at 4500 rpm and your torque curve is at 3-6000 rpm, then you've lost some accelaration. Whereas a standard let's you shift at exactly where you want. Now the manual valve bodies in an auto eliminate this and give standards a run for there money. So, stock transmissions, standards are faster on certain vehicles, but mod vehicles no, not really. It just all depends on those factors I just listed.

And I'll add another thing too. You build a car exceeding 400 hp and an auto will not hold up. That's why drag cars use standards. You'll fry most automatics at about 500hp, with some exceptions.

yes you can out shift a automatic with a manual transmission

All other things being equal...

Not always, but most of the time, yes.