We all know that some atheists can be as irrational as any theist. I think that one of the reasons for this irrational thinking on the part of both atheists and theists is the reliance on belief or the lack of belief as the basis for their respective points of view. None of us as far as I know can choose to believe or not believe in truth claims that we become acquainted with. Belief comes and goes with the passage of time in unpredictable ways as we experience strong emotions. So relying on belief to describe one's view of God's existence is a rather vague and unstable basis for one's thinking.
So I at least have decided to describe myself as an atheist not as merely a person who lacks belief in Gods but as a man who has good reasons to be skeptical about the objective existence of any Gods. Although reasons to doubt that Gods exist beyond the imagination are legion, one argument in particular I think is particularly compelling:
A real God would have knowledge and power that no man or woman could possibly have while an imaginary God would have nothing more than what the crafty men who created him have. So when we investigate the Gods including Yahweh and Jesus, what knowledge and power do we see? I've never seen anything more than what people have, and in some cases much less. Logically then, I conclude that no God exists except in the pages of myth and in the minds of lonely and struggling people. I am an atheist for that reason.
See how much more compelling that is than the weak: I'm an atheist because I lack belief in Gods? A definition like that makes you sound like you're afraid to prove it.
So I at least have decided to describe myself as an atheist not as merely a person who lacks belief in Gods but as a man who has good reasons to be skeptical about the objective existence of any Gods. Although reasons to doubt that Gods exist beyond the imagination are legion, one argument in particular I think is particularly compelling:
A real God would have knowledge and power that no man or woman could possibly have while an imaginary God would have nothing more than what the crafty men who created him have. So when we investigate the Gods including Yahweh and Jesus, what knowledge and power do we see? I've never seen anything more than what people have, and in some cases much less. Logically then, I conclude that no God exists except in the pages of myth and in the minds of lonely and struggling people. I am an atheist for that reason.
See how much more compelling that is than the weak: I'm an atheist because I lack belief in Gods? A definition like that makes you sound like you're afraid to prove it.