Oh my God, I'm an Atheist !!

Seven years ago I looked at death. I watched my wife die.Many commented by saying "She's still with you." and the like.It was so appealing to think that she was or that I would see her again someday I looked into myself to see if I could find anything there that would allow me to feel that way. It wasn't really about God per se just the idea that she wasn't really gone.I found that on this topic, like others with no good reason to think there is any truth in them, I had not a hint of belief. Even facing a death that felt like my own I had not the slightest belief even when I wanted to.I suspect that there will be less incentive to believe on facing my own death and don't expect that I will have an reason to even think of a god just as I don't in everyday life until someone forces it in my face.You don't understand the views of many atheists at all. Not in the slightest.Many times people have asked about your feelings regarding gods like Odin or Zeus. My feelings about your god are probably less than yours about those two others.What we do get riled up about is what the belief in these gods causes people to do. We do make the mistake, I think, of not always remembering the good that can come from it but we also see clearly the destructive effect it has on believers ability to think rational about very important subjects. It is scary to think of believers in fairy tales asking for help from an invisible, imaginary friend when they are making important decisions or relying on what a preacher or imam tells them to think.The kind of thinking demonstrated by a large percentage of the believers that frequent EvC is what makes an atheist react against religion which s/he would otherwise ignore as we ignore the summer soltices rites at Stonehenge.

Because many people were on about it and for months, looking back, I was half irrational in shock. And you make it sound like a more serious "exploring" than it was. It doesn't take very long to rummage through the corners of the dusty ol' mind and find that there's no monster hiding there. To be an atheist means one doesn't spend much time thinking about any old god. What I do spend time thinking about is the affect of a belief in a god. I agree with a great deal of what Dawkins and others have written from that thinking and personal observation. From the same place I think they might be throwing the baby out with the bath water. There may well be value in the religions that come from those beliefs and we may not know how to replace them. I wonder about a lot of things and hope to live long enough to find out if we are alone in this universe or not for example. However, I don't burn any brain fuel wondering about a god as described in any of the world's religions past or present. It is very clear to me that they are all, at their core, the same. What is worth wondering about is what is it in the way our brain works that makes it so easy for a large number of individuals to fall into the delusion about Odin, Zeus et. al.?