I'm going to answer your questions and address your points briefly as best I can (which, it turns out, isn't very briefly at all <G>).

Don't let the hate mail I (and other atheists) receive make you worry about calling yourself a Christian. There are plenty of people -- both atheist and religious -- who are obnoxious, unthinking, judgmental, or all of the above. This isn't the fault of belief or lack thereof, it's the fault of the individual. It has nothing to do with you, although trying to be a good example to counteract the idiots who say that they represent your group is certainly a good idea.

I do understand that the existence of God is a possibility. However, I should point out that I consider this to be a very, very remote possibility. In my opinion, there are many other more likely explanations for the universe.

You ask an interesting question about atheists having faith. To answer, I would first like to point out the difference between faith and trust. As I use the word, faith is believing in something without evidence or in spite of evidence. Trust is believing something because experience has shown that the source of the information is reliable. I trust that when I think I see a cat there really is a cat there, because my eyes have never deceived me to that extent. I have faith that the universe exists, even though I can't test that statement, because other options make less sense.

It's also common to trust a source for one type of information and not another. I trust medical information from my family doctor more than I trust it from my philosophy professor. I don't trust what I see when I'm asleep.

I live in the United States, so let's talk about my belief that Japan exists. I have met people from Japan who say it exists, I have seen atlases that show where Japan is, and my sister says she's been to Japan. For me, these are trustworthy sources for information of this type, so I think they are sufficient evidence that Japan exists. In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift writes about Japan. However, because most of the places in that book are obviously made up, I would not believe that Japan exists just because of Swift's writing -- I don't trust him on this subject.

God is such a huge concept that I can't imagine believing in Him just because someone said He existed. I trust you to tell me if you believe in God (since you are an expert on what you believe), but that does nothing to prove to me that God exists. It is not uncommon for people of all intelligence levels to sincerely believe all sorts of things that aren't true. If I took their word for the existence of God, I'd have to take their word about all sorts of things, and that would complicate my search for truth unnecessarily.

So, because I don't trust anyone's expertise on the subject of God's existence enough to take it as the final word on the subject, I must see convincing objective evidence of His existence. I have not seen this evidence, so my only other option for believing in God is to have faith that God exists. I do not feel that God exists, and I do not see that having this faith is my best available choice (as having faith that the universe exists does), so I have no faith that God exists.

So, to sum up, I agree that everyone has faith (as I define it) in some things. The goal should be to have faith in as few things as possible as a defense against unnecessary or incorrect beliefs.

Your second question is another complex one.

For the belief in Julius Caesar, you are correct that less evidence is required to believe in his existence than to believe in the existence of God. This is because the more extraordinary a claim is, the more evidence is required to support it. Scientists used to believe the thought that meteors fell from outer space was ridiculous, but after enough evidence was amassed, they changed their minds. They would need significantly more evidence to be convinced that meteors fell from outer space because God was throwing them at something, because introducing the concept of God massively complicates the issue.

The Bible does contain some historical facts (although not as many as some would like), but it also has a lot of things that are pretty obviously legendary (such as the Tower of Babel), or that should be considered extraordinary claims because they violate science as we know it (such as many miracle stories). I wouldn't say that these things are obviously untrue, but I would say that I would need a lot more evidence before I considered them to be proven true.

Some argue that there is so much historical accuracy in the Bible that we should consider it accurate on all subjects. I do not believe that this logically follows. A biology text from the fifteenth century might have a lot of correct information in it, but that doesn't mean I should consider it accurate by modern standards. Also, religious texts are unreliable (from my perspective) because their standard of truth and mine may not agree. For example, someone might say that they saw Jesus, when what they mean is that they saw Jesus in a vision. To me, these are not the same thing. Also, a religious person might argue that event X happened because it was prophesized that X would happen when Jesus was born, prophecies are true, Jesus was born, and therefore X must have occurred. This statement might have religious veracity, but it does nothing for me.

Let's take another example. Homer's Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War. There is now evidence that this war took place, and that some of the military facts in the Iliad are correct. The Iliad also says that the War was caused by the gods, that the gods took an active hand in it, and that warrior Achilles was invulnerable. How much evidence for the Iliad's accuracy about the Trojan War would you need before you believed that it was sufficient evidence for the existence of the Greek gods and magical invulnerability? I assume that complete military accuracy would not be enough.

There are many, many examples like this. Another one: the Japanese used to trace their emperor's ancestry back to the sun god. No matter how many hundreds of years of accurate ancestry they had, without a lot of additional proof I'm going to assume that the list of ancestors becomes inaccurate at some point before the deity is named. And I seem to recall reading about an Egyptian military monument on which was written that the Egyptians had completely wiped the Jewish race from the face of the earth. No matter how much we rely on such monuments for our history, we obviously can't rely on this one.

At one point does the Bible turn from a historical document into a mythical text? There is no point at which this happens. The Bible mixed history and religion, and individual facts must be judged on their own merits. In some cases, the truth is not yet known because there is not enough evidence. All historical documents should be treated in this way, to one extent or another.

In the discussion of good, you make some excellent points. I agree that the term "good" is hard to define, and in fact I discuss this at length in some other conversations on this Web site. I also agree that if there is an all-powerful being, I can't know its mind. Might this being and I disagree about what is good? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that I might consider its behavior not to be good. For example, an infinite being might believe that it can do whatever it likes for its own enjoyment with creatures it created, and that obtaining entertainment in this way is "good." I would disagree. This does not mean that my definition of good is wrong, only that this deity and I have divergent moral systems.

Even if we can't rigorously define good, I think that most people these days would say that not killing innocents is good and torturing the guilty is bad. Many religious people would say that these are things that are not good if people do them, but are good if God does them. In that case, we shouldn't refer to God as good in the same way that we would tell an individual to be good. Things get even more complex when religious people refer to God as "infinitely good."

But at the root of the argument, all this is irrelevant. My question was about how a particular religion defined God to be good under these circumstances -- not about whether God really has these qualities. If their answer, akin to yours, is that God is good and we can't say otherwise, then they are just defining "good" as "whatever God wants good to be," and I'd say that this is a pointless definition.

By the way, in my experience, most religious people I've heard address this issue in a coherent way generally say that anyone who doesn't believe in God is specifically showing hatred for God (whether they admit it or not), and that such hatred deserves eternal punishment even from an infinitely good, infinitely loving, infinitely forgiving deity. I don't buy this argument at all.

Thanks for all the great questions. Nothing insulting here at all. If you have anything else to ask or wish to discuss any of these topics in greater detail, let me know.

Now, I have a question for you (and it's a big one): If you don't mind my asking, why do you believe God exists?

I know you said that your note isn't really about your girlfriend, but this is an important topic that we haven't really discussed on my site yet, so I'm going to go ahead and say a few words about it before getting to your main question.

I noticed a few interesting things in your description of your apparent frustration with your girlfriend's beliefs. One is that you put the word "devout" in quotes. I'd be interested to know why you did this. Do you think she's not really devout? Or that the word is of dubious meaning or potentially bothersome? I'd say that there's nothing wrong with describing someone as devout if that's what they are. It's not an insult, just a statement of fact.

I understand that it can be frustrating trying to discuss a difference in religious opinion with someone you care about, particularly if neither of you have a lot of experience with this kind of discussion (which may be the case here). You seem to be taking the right track by asking why your girlfriend believes what she does, as opposed to specifically confronting her beliefs. Too many would start out by attacking details of the religious person's beliefs, and that very frequently turns into a struggle instead of a mutual understanding.

If your girlfriend does not have a strong theological base (that is, if she is devout without a lot of significant religious learning), she may have difficulty explaining why she is religious. It may just be part of the way that she thinks at this point. This may be why she falls back upon "I just want you to be saved" when you are looking for something more specific. She doesn't really have the answers you are looking for, but because she cares about you and believes that people who do not share her beliefs will be punished, she is understandably concerned about your eternal welfare. It says good things about her sincerity and her feelings about you that she wants to save you from eternal punishment, whether or not you think that such punishment exists.

You mention trying to open your girlfriend's mind. Personally, I would stay away from thinking in those terms. Far too often, people use the phrase "open your mind" to mean "stop thinking rationally and just agree that I might be right." You aren't using it in this way, but I think that avoiding the phrase might serve you well down the road. (Also, it can sound a little condescending.) Really what you want to do is help your girlfriend see your point of view while, at the same time, make her point of view clear to you. You both need "open minds" because you both need to be able to see the situation from the other's perspective.

I'm going to dissect your next sentence rather severely. You say, "If she wants to believe in Christianity that's fine." This makes it sound like she is making a conscious decision to agree with Christianity or to disagree with you. I very much doubt that is the case, any more than it is the case that you are choosing not to agree with her for one reason or another. You don't want to risk thinking that she's religious because she's stubborn, when she may be religious because she has feelings that compel her to be religious.

You continue by saying that you want your girlfriend to, "at least accept the fact that we can't be sure of pretty much anything that she has been taught." Well, this may be true, depending on what she has been taught. I don't know what religion she is specifically so I can't say. I would, again, caution against making such sweeping statements, though, since if she gets her sense of morality through religious education you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater (that is, some of what she believes may be correct, even if it is correct for incorrect reasons). The important point you are making is that if she has faith based on feelings instead of evidence, then her reasons for faith are compelling to nobody but her. She can't expect you to be religious because she feels religious. True, she may have concerns about your eventual damnation, but if she has no other compelling reason for religious belief, then she has no way to convert you. I'm guessing that in her religion you can't just say you believe in Christianity in order to be saved (since God would know that you are not sincere), so you must be convinced.

Depending on your girlfriend's particular faith, she may believe that you can avoid damnation by living a good life, whether or not you believe in Christianity. This is something you and she should discuss. If her faith does not believe that there can be salvation through living a good life, then it might be worthwhile for her to find out (if she doesn't know already) how her religion believes God to be good when he will eternally punish a moral individual just because that person has no (or has the wrong) religious faith.

Finally, you say that you want your girlfriend to know, "that it is most important to cherish the life we live now, and let whatever happens after we die just happen." Frankly, I think you're a bit off base here. This statement makes sense from a non-religious perspective, but it doesn't make sense from the perspective of many Christian believers. If your girlfriend thinks that there is a serious chance of being punished for eternity, then letting the afterlife "just happen" makes no sense at all. From her perspective, you might be saying something similar to, "I know that there's a bomb in that house, but it may not go off, so let's go live there and just let what happens happen." In order for your girlfriend to accept your beliefs about life and death, you need to convince her that either there is no afterlife or that if there is an afterlife you have as good a chance of a good afterlife as she does (since for all we know God may value sincerity over rote devotion). This may require a significant change in her religious thinking, and you need to be prepared for the possibility that she cannot make that change.

Sorry for going on about this in such detail, but this is actually a very important topic. If your relationship with your girlfriend is serious, then these issues need to be addressed sooner or later. I have seen several couples come to great difficulty when they believe that they can live with mutually exclusive religious beliefs -- particularly when then try and raise children. Even if the relationship is not that serious at this point, couples may have difficulties when dealing with philosophical differences about the morality of intimacy and other subjects. It is great that you are working through these issues now. And if your girlfriend would like to write to me about the issue from her perspective, I would welcome the correspondence.

So, after an acre or two of answers to questions you didn't ask, let's get to your actual inquiry.

You ask about agnosticism. I use the word agnostic to indicate the belief that the existence of a deity is not provable one way or the other. I don't think that the beliefs you describe having fit into that category (if I had to choose, I'd say you actually sound a bit more Deist or Buddhist).

You say that you know, "that there is something about that very small part about us that makes us a living being." This is a very interesting statement, coming as it did after your statements about your girlfriend's beliefs, because it is essentially a statement of faith. There is no logical, rational reason I can think of for believing that life has anything to do with some "special power that separates us from a rock" If you have two lumps of iron, I don't think there's any way to tell that one lump is composed of iron that used to be part of a living creature.

I'd say -- and this is completely from an atheist perspective, so you may not agree -- that your feeling that there is some kind of life force is similar to the feeling that a cave man might have about an automobile. The cave man might see the car drive and then take it apart to see what makes it move. He'll keep looking and looking, dividing the car into smaller parts, but never find something he recognizes as a force of motion. He may end up holding a single bolt, looking at it, and wondering what it is about this bolt that makes it part of a moving thing instead of just something made of metal. But his belief that there is a special motivating force is nothing more than a statement of his ignorance (in the non-pejorative sense) of how a car works.

I think that your feelings about life fall into the same category. Life is an incredibly bizarre and difficult to comprehend phenomena. It is, in fact, difficult to define life in a rigorous way. Are viruses alive? Is fire? But I'd say that life is just a natural phenomenon, a wonderful, fascinating, complex process that deserves our respect and inquisitiveness. Science can tell us a lot about living things -- and there is still a lot to learn -- but it does not require any thing beyond the visible to explain living systems.

Given all this, if you feel that there must be more to life and thought than mere mechanics, that's okay. But in that case, you must realize that you have a belief based on your feelings as opposed to on objective evidence. This puts you in the same boat as your girlfriend -- you both have beliefs that are not based on evidence. That might be a good basis for your next conversation.

Good luck, and feel free to write if you wish to continue our discussion.