The problem is not one of personal faith or lack of faith. I'm happy to respect your belief or none belief in a god - I respect my religious friends' right to believe, although I also reserve the right to tell them when I think they're talking shit - a right they also reserve for me! Please however don't ask me to to respect some of the shit that goes with some belief - homophobia, oppression of women, bombing and killing and all the other things done in someone's god's name. No-one has any right to expect me to respect that or any right to put me down for refusing to respect it. Also, where I live, two of the five state-funded primary schools are faith schools. I resent that my taxes are being used to pay for this: I don't personally believe there is a god, yet my taxes are used to promote religious teaching. On what level is that acceptable? Surely even believers would accept that non-believers shouldn't subsidise the promotion of their beliefs? This is just one of many example of where religion intrudes into my life, whether I like it or not. That's not about your private, personal faith (which I will happily respect, with the caveat of disagreeing with you when you cross over into promoting oppressive ideas as noted above) but about religion oppressing me. I have the right to object to that and will use it. If in the eyes of Jack, Olddude and some of the other believers here who seem to object to non believers stating their opinions, that makes me some sort of monster, so be it. Boo!