i'm an atheist myself too and was always stumped by the ignorance and sheer stupidity some christians i know displayed. saying how i'm alive is proof of god's existence, my mother raised me catholic until i was about 8 years old, then she said now you're old enough to make up your own mind about religion. and i still respect her very much. even though she is a "believer" herself, she's not a person to try and convert other people. i have a few "believers" in my group of friends and one of them always tries to convince me to join the good side. and actually thinking she can scare me with threats of eternal damnation, i don't believe in it so i'm not scared of it. when you'r dead you're dead, that's it. what also sticks out in my view is that parents of children(or atleast older believers) are always so angry at atheists, i once almost got beaten up by the father of my girlfriend because i said i didn't believe in god. i mean, if you believe in god that's fine, whatever makes you happy, but don't try and punish me for what YOU think is wrong. i don't see any harm in not believing in god.

believing in god would be virtually impossible for me since i want proof before i believe in something. which is then no longer a belief becaus you KNOW it's true. for instance the bible, an entire religion, hundreds of millions of followers, all entirely based on a book. for all we know we'll be believing in harry potter in 2000 years. i'm not denying that jesus never existed, he may have existed, but that he would've had magical god-like powers, i sincerely doubt that.

people without the resolution to investigate things on how they work need an explanation for all the things that they don't understand. that's why i think there's is something like the bible.

this has become quite a long e-mail :P to colse it i would like to say that i find your site hilarious and defininitely can see that there is a great deal of sarcasm as wel as a sincere protest against religion all on it's own. keep up the good work!

I am constantly amazed and appalled by the violent reactions some people have to atheism -- it's a subject that comes up in this blog far too often. There are some atheists who react this way to religion, but (in my experience) not nearly as many.

I agree with you that it would be impossible to believe in God without proof. I've had people ask why I don't "at least try" to believe in God, and I don't even know what that means. How do you "try" to believe something is true (or not)?

I love the subject of the origin of the Bible. It is an interesting and layered book with a complex history. Some of it is very obviously the result of a need for explanatory mythology (Garden of Eden, Tower of Babel, etc.), and some is obviously there to justify various laws and traditions. I agree with you that nothing magical is necessary to explain its resistance.

I'm hoping I'm not around for the world based on Harry Potter, though!