I have some specific comments which I hope to get out later. However:

Religion and politics, those perennial favorites, cover the entire arena of human activity. To address either category as a specific entirely misses what either category is about. To say you are against religion because group A does this and group B does that and then make a blanket dismissal of the "category" merely demostrates ignorance of the subject. The same is true for "politics". So then you begin to discuss a specific religion and that hits you wrong because it can often be offensive to others folks and other religious orders hence the "true path" vs all other paths comes into play and with out focus any calm, rational discussion evaporates into the ionosphere!

Clearly, if one religion advocates peace, soft answers, loving your enemies, going the extra mile, etc. it is fundamentally different from one that says "kill your enemies, your doing God a favor" or another that tells its adherents to turn their minds inward to discover truth. Religion, the ways people have of being religious and how they use religion and how religion uses people, in my opinion, is a fascinating topic, worthy of study. And again the same is virtually true of the political arena as well.

My thread title tended to narrow down the subject a little as Atheism indicates the rejection of the idea of one God. The reasons for rejecting this concept are also many and varied and the proof of that is in the above posts. A most lively discussion! Yes, the title is provocative, as I intended it to be. I think it is a little more inticing than "Tell Me Why You Are An Atheist" and a little shorter too. It also let's me tell you the questions that came to my mind on the other thread about the survey which, had I voiced it over there, would have been major thread drift. But Hey! The 'Cat never dissappoints!

Clearer is to say something like, "I am opposed to a religon that____!" Or that, "if it does not satisfy "reason" per se, then I reject it out of hand." That is a good, valid argument. One thing really amazes me here is how much emotion is brought to the topic, strong feelings from many directions and, like Mrrzy's posts, not without cause! I believe I did state my very narrow view on my own religion, care of the needy, and that I am generally not in favor of highly organized religions, but I DO understand them. It has been said that religion is Man's way of reaching out to God (that is, when it is not fraud or has been a tool of evil here on Earth) but I would be a little broader by saying religion is one way Man reaches out for something beyond Himself. Hence science can be a religion (Mill's Method of Scientific Reasoning in particular). Sexual fetishes and practices not only can be a religion but they ARE as in the Kama Sutra. Religion is a huge topic.

It has also been said that when a man talks to God, that is called prayer. When God talks to a man, that is called Schizophrenia! Perhaps! When you are talking about THE God represented in the book commonly called the Bible then you have a more focused target for discussion as, that is what most folks in the Westernized world think of when God is mentioned and indeed, that was what I had in mind from the beginning. Judaism and Christianity are called a "revealed" religion. God and all that follows is an assertion. It is a faith proposition to be believed or reject by the individual listener. No argument or reason is put forth and therefore it purports having a knowledge of a different order and since the God set forth is a personal God (that is, not "the Force" or some other concept of deity) the knowledge is of a personal nature. And that is to say, you know OF Him or know Him directly. Such knowledge can only be compared with the internal picture of God as presented in the Bible. Is it a consistent picture? Does it contradict the character of God as set forth in the Bible? To claim to have this knowledge of God is to claim that you have somehow met this being becasue He has revealed Himself to you and that is the question at hand.

If you claim to know Mr. Snuffaluffagus (of Sesame Street fame) and someone else denys his existence, you have a delima! Short of having Mr. S meet the denier how do you prove his existence? And that was the gist of the story line in the TV series. To an atheist who set human reason forth as the standard whereby to judge all things, there is no God in the picture and that little voice one claims to hear inside is the "Sky Fairy" or some such. And I understand why this can be maddening, to hear someone go on about God is an insult to reason! The Apostle, Paul says "...the Greeks seek after wisdom (reason)... and to the Greeks (Christ) is foolishness..." (see I Cor 1, 17-31). And that is, to me, the crux of the whole issue: is there more than one type of knowledge?

In legal courst across America there is recognized more than one type of "truth". There is a "preponderance" of the evidence which is in line with inductive reasoning. There is also "conclusive" proof or truth where no other explanation is possible (deductive reasoning). Stephen Hawking would have some fun with this! And then there is the evidence offered by an eyewitness. The latter almost always has to have collaborating testimony or evidenceto be considered valid or worthy of consideration by a jury.

I see the foregoing as the parameters of the discussion but I'm always open to any new arguments or ideas. I'll post those individual comments a little later on. Thanks for listening!