Ron, do have any evidence that the atrocities caused by "atheistic" regimes or the atrocities caused by "religious" regimes were anything other than power-hungry monsters doing what power-hungry monsters do? Gordian's Knot would suggest that, since there is no preponderance of atrocity on either side of the religion issue, that being the sort of person who seeks that sort of power might be the answer, not whether or not they are religious. Your asking for evidence that will prove you wrong is an attempt by you to force the conversation onto your ground. Most of us -- including the religious folks here -- think you're on the wrong ground to start with, so why should we provide evidence to disprove an obviously faulty assumption?

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE stop referring to "Mudcat atheists" or "most atheists". Lumping people into groups and making assumptions about them once you have placed them in your groups is very bad conversational technique. It allows you to ignore and belittle people and the things they say because, in your mind, they are by definition worthless. You're still being a jerk in this regard.

Quoting famous people to make your points is pointless. Guest from Sanity already did that, and we already showed how meaningless they are. It's easy to find a bunch of anti-atheist quotes on the internet. It's a bit more difficult to examine the actual value of the quotes within a discussion. Perhaps you could give it a try, though.

Atheists--especially some Mudcat atheists, it seems (aside from Bill D and Amos)- tend more towards an unjustified arrogance on many questions. And they could use a dose of humility.

Please show me where I've been arrogant. Please read all the posts by the religious folks to ensure that there is no hint of arrogance there. Please get a sense of humor -- most of the stuff that Steve has said that has pissed you off so much was obvious light-hearted playing with the ideas. Please explain how you would avoid being a bit bitter if you were surrounded by a society that, in general, believes you are going to hell because you can't believe in impossible things.

I've asked you this before, speaking of deafening silence: if you think belief or agnosticism are smarter than atheism, give your evidence for the possibility of the existence of god. Steve wants scientific evidence. I can see his point, but I would settle for any evidence whatsoever. Logic is also a fairly big deal for me. Present the evidence. That's all any of us in this thread have been asking for. Either you have evidence, or the belief is irrational. There's nothing wrong with irrational belief -- as has been said many times, folks are free to believe anything they want. But if you want to claim that belief is rational, you have to actually provide evidence and logic.