""a pretty conventionally-minded modern person who already takes for granted that his rational knowledge about the physical, observable world and the scientific viewpoint IS the complete, absolute answer to everything, and that there's nothing more he needs to ever enquire about, because he already HAS the "keys to the kingdom", he is one hell of a smart character, way smarter than those poor simple-minded people who go to church, and he can snicker down his sleeve at people who believe in anything else at all besides material things and science for the rest of his gloriously entitled and brilliant life.""

You obviously as unlucky in your atheist upbringing as I was in my religious one.

A real atheist has no such pretentious belief in his own total knowledge, and questions everything, but he does so from a standpoint of logic and evidence, which he finds singularly lacking in the belief system, doctrine and dogma of religion,

When he does question those, he is met with a barrage of often hostile and vituperative responses, in which he is treated as though he were somehow attempting to destroy their faith.

To say that the spiritual and religious are more inclined to question and an atheist is certain in his doctrinaire attitudes is IMHO a total reversal of the truth.

At least I have never heard Steve Shaw repeatedly use the circular arguments which regularly ar advanced by the other side.

And I am not an atheist, but a Theist, even more likely to question in both directions, but only the atheists of this world have ever supplied an answer which I can accept based on any evidence at all.

The religious response has always been some variation on either "You've got to have faith", or simply "Get out of this classroom".

As a result, I am my own religious guide and my church is wherever I happen to be.

Don T.