But Ed, religion deals in certainties all the time. Our Father who art in heaven...yeah? Prove it, mate! "There's probably no God..." (said the bus ad) - now you can't really ask anyone to prove that, can you? Atheists who deal in certainties are not my kind of atheists. They don't half muck up the argument. You can't prove there's no God any more than you can prove there is a God. Atheists are occasionally tempted to rattle on about proof and express themselves in certainties by believers who like to pounce on the non-certainties and say, well, you can't really be an atheist then, can you - you must be an agnostic! They don't know what they're talking about, of course.