GuitarBizarre

I'm an atheist. I simply think there are far too many compelling arguments that explain the belief in god as a human coping mechanism or behavioural oddity.

Also, burden of proof states that the one making the positive claim carries the larger responsibility to prove their point. In this case, the religious make the claim that god does exist and carry the responsibility to prove that. Bearing in mind that holy scripture is not proof, and that 'miracles' have often been explained to be mundane, no religious person has any empirical evidence to rely on regarding their claims

I make the claim that god absolutely does not exist, citing explanations that portray belief as a human concern that would exist independent of the actuality of a god. For me this makes the positive claim that humans made the whole damned shebang up in order to explain what they couldn't explain. I think thats reasonable, and the notions presented in most religions are continually challenged bit by bit by scientific discoveries regarding what was once considered 'miracles' or 'omens'. Shooting stars, fire, lightning, eclipses, all of those things were once integral parts of belief systems and have subsequently been explained away by science, convincingly and with empirical proof. As science continues down the road it will, I have every confidence it will eventually, providing we don't go extinct, prove the mundanity of every miracle portrayed in modern religion and also provide compelling and practically irrefutable arguments for the idea that gods existence is a human invention in its entirety.

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SATCHMO

I think that one thing that can be said for theists and atheists alike is that there is no standard motivation for disbelief/belief. In other words, there are Christians who's primary motivation for their faith is the notion that if they follow Jesus and do everything that they're supposed to do they will go to heaven; These tend to be the pricks that people run into, because when you put yourself in the position of trying to do everything right so that you can "win the prize", your initial reaction when you see someone who's happy doing whatever they want is, "well, that person is going to hell". There are Christians who simply at some point in their life found that they could not surmount whatever obstacles life presented them, so they had to turn to something greater than themselves and found that the ensuing dynamic/relationship with god really merited continuing to follow on that path, there are also Christians who have been steeped in the religion since birth, so Christianity forms the entire infrastructure of their reality.

Conversely, there are atheists that do not believe in the existence of an anthropomorphic deity, yet still have some sort of spirituality. There are atheists who's reason for not believing in the existence of a deity is caused by a personal event that lead them to their belief that because of said occurrence, there must not be a god. There are others, materialists, who simply do not believe in what cannot be empirically proven, apprehended with the five senses, or arrived at through sound reasoning.

s_k

Hard to argue with that when the kid's a believer, I guess.
In my elementary school we actually had someone to teach us religious lessons. You had the choice then wheter you would attend them or not. Early to middle nineties. Times have changed since then, there's no such thing on that school anymore, at all. Less people are starting to believe where I live. I see that as a good thing. Problem is we do have a lot of problems lately with muslims trying to change the Netherlands. One way or the other, religion ****s with your free will...
(To all those who do have a certain religion: This is just my vision, I don't judge you as long as you don't tell me what to believe ).

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GuitarBizarre

I'd qualify as this, although amusingly, while I don't believe in spiritual things, I do have a side of me that could be seen as such.

Mainly because sometimes suspending disbelief IRL is just plain fun and healthy.

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Howard the Duck

I may be somewhat a fanatic but I sold my soul to rock n roll before meeting Jesus so it goes both ways.

s_k

If God or Jesus don't like rock & roll, then there's a reason not to believe .

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TockTockTock

This is how I picture Jesus.

The Batlord

You know, religion would probably be an awesome thing to discuss in real life, except that every time I get in a religious disussion, it's not with some level headed person who just wants a good discussion. It's some dumb, disrepectful ******* who just wants to tell me I'm going to hell for being an atheist. And then they recycle the same old tired arguments over and over again. I swear, I wish I could go back in time and stick my foot up Pascal's ass. Most religious folk are perfectly reasonable and intelligent, but why must I deal with every single digit IQ fuc% tw@t who wants to preach at me?

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Greatest bit of Christian Logic:

1. Time has to have a beginning. No real reason, but it has to.
2. The Earth has to have a beginning because time has a beginning.
3. The Earth couldn't have come out of nowhere so God had to have created it.
4. Nothing had to create God because he's more powerful than time, which absolutely must have a beginning - like the Earth.

/\ Heard this one constantly.

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RVCA

It's amazing how deists can state that "the universe can't have just come from nothing" and then turn right around and say "but god did!"