I really hate argument via Web links, but here we go.

You are incorrect that the definition of atheist is "narrow wherever you look." Dictionaries, for example, are not in agreement about the definition of atheism, and many include those who disbelieve in the existence of god as well as those who deny the existence of god. Examples:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=atheist
http://www.answers.com/topic/atheist?method=22
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atheist

Personally, I would avoid dictionaries in this case, because they reflect what the majority thinks, and atheists are not the majority. Far better is to look at what atheists themselves think, and there are plenty who think as I do.

You are incorrect about there only being one form of atheistm. I suggest that you read the articles on atheism located here:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist4.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist

There is also a very useful passage in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is interesting even though I would quibble with some of the wording:

Instead of saying that an atheist is someone who believes that it is false or probably false that there is a God, a more adequate characterization of atheism consists in the more complex claim that to be an atheist is to be someone who rejects belief in God for the following reasons (which reason is stressed depends on how God is being conceived): for an anthropomorphic God, the atheist rejects belief in God because it is false or probably false that there is a God; for a nonanthropomorphic God (the God of Luther and Calvin, Aquinas, and Maimonides), he rejects belief in God because the concept of such a God is either meaningless, unintelligible, contradictory, incomprehensible, or incoherent; for the God portrayed by some modern or contemporary theologians or philosophers, he rejects belief in God because the concept of God in question is such that it merely masks an atheistic substance--e.g., "God" is just another name for love, or "God" is simply a symbolic term for moral ideals.

I do not have faith that there is no god any more than I have faith that there are no fairies. Do you consider yourself agnostic on the subject of fairies in that there is probably no way to prove that they do not and have never existed? If not, why do you give god special treatment?

As for having my "rebel cake" -- I do not consider myself a rebel. I am not acting against anything or rejecting anything. I simply have not been convinced that there is a deity.

What is there that I know that I define my belief by? I know that the world would be a better place if people treated each other better and took responsibility for their own actions. I know that it is more difficult to deceive a group of people if that group knows how to think scientifically. I also know that you will win more friends and change more minds through thoughtful discussion than through attacking beliefs.

You may have gotten the hint that I find your correspondence truly annoying. Why? Because we really should be on the same side in this, but you choose to write to me in what I perceive as an inflamatory tone because you disagree with my definition of atheism. Personally, I think it is, in general, a bit silly to call yourself an agnostic, but that's not a big deal to me so long as the philosophy behind the belif is sound. What is a big deal is that you are waving your ignorance like a club, and that doesn't do anyone any good.

Wow, our first threatening letter! Thanks! I hope it will surprise you that I'm going to ask my loyal readers (both religious and not) to go ahead and forward your petition to their friends, along with whatever comments they'd like to make on it. I think I'll get more benefit from the publicity than harm from the pointless petition.

And in any case, this site violates no law. I gather no personally identifiable information, and anyone who wishes to discuss religion or atheism with me is more than welcome to do so and will be treated with respect (so far as it is deserved) regardless of their age.

There are two kinds of atheist -- those who say that there is no god, and those who say they don't have sufficient reason to believe in a god. I am of the latter sort.

I agree with you that there is no proof that there is no god. Where we differ is that I allow the possibility that there is proof for the existance of god that I have not thought of yet. From my perspective, it is you who are making a statement of faith -- that there is no possible proof for the existence of god that you have not thought of.

That -- plus the fact that I don't want to define my beliefs by what I don't know -- is why I don't call myself agnostic.

That is a complex subject, which is why so many discussions revolve around it. I always begin any discussion of right and wrong by introducing my two rules for acceptable philosophy -- that a philosophy must not contradict itself, and that you must not mind if others think as you do. I think most people would agree that any morality (or other system of belief) should at least follow these two rules.

With that out of the way, I'd say that if you want to do right you should, at a minimum, treat others as you want to be treated and avoid doing harm, particularly to the innocent. If you want to be truly good, you should also try your best to make the world a better place so far as you are able.

For example, I'd say that a Christian who writes to me in the hopes of convincing me to accept Jesus as a personal savior and save my soul is doing good, because in their mind they are trying to help me. I'd say that someone who writes to me full of foul language and damnation is not doing good because they would object to having their beliefs treated in that way.

I don't believe there is no God, I just don't believe that there is a God. It's a subtle but important point. God might be out there for all I know, I just don't see sufficient evidence. You need to have some pretty serious evidence if you're going to convince me that there is a supreme being whose existence should impact my behavior for the rest of my life.

Another important point is that while there is less-than-convincing (to me) evidence for the existence of the Christian God, there is also less-than-convincing evidence for a lot of other religious concepts. If I say that God must exist because there is evidence, however feeble, then by my second rule of allowable philosophy I must not think less of those who have different beliefs based on equally bad evidence. For me, that just causes too many problems. Also, it begs the question of why I should accept Christianity's evidence as opposed to another religion's.

This line of argument doesn't work for me. First, "evil" in the context of some of the people who were wiped out by the Israelites seemed to be based on worshipping the wrong gods or occupying land God had promised to the Israelites. That's not enough for me. Second, arguing that if a race isn't destroyed it will wipe out your race in the future should not be allowed. There are people in the middle east today who believe that Israel should be wiped out for just this reason, and I find it unacceptable. Third, I would say that it is never right to kill babies, no matter who their parents are. And finally, I don't think that putting people in prison or giving the death penalty to dispose of those who commit heinous crimes is even on the same playing field as genocide.

Yes, I was referring to Abraham, and you are correct that God's asking Abraham to sacrifice his son was a test of faith. The point here is that, even though he did change his command later, God did ask Abraham to kill his son and Abraham was going to do it because God asked. This makes it difficult for me to accept your previous statement that God would never ask a follower to do something that would harm another. At best, you could say that he'd never ask you to harm another without a good reason, and that you might not know what that reason is, but if this is the case then I am left with no criteria for determining if God is asking me to do something or if I am being deceived.

There was a case many years ago when a man (who was apparently rather imbalanced) killed his son because he thought God had asked him to. Afterwards, he said that he thought God was going to stop him as he had stopped Abraham. How could this man have known he wasn't obeying a command from God?

I don't like to get into exchanging Bible quotes, but here goes: "And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians. (KJV)" What we have here is God convincing the Egyptians to loan things to the Israelites -- not give them things -- with the intent that the Israelites won't bring the stuff back and therefore will cause the Egyptians financial hardship. To me, borrowing something without the intent to return it is stealing. In any case, this doesn't sound like stuff that would be a lot of use while wandering in the desert.

I completely agree. What I need is a way to tell the difference between people who are really following God's commands and those who are not. If the only way to tell is that people who are really doing God's work are doing things I would consider good or charitable, then I'd suggest that we can "cut out the middle man" and just be good and charitable without waiting for a command from God.

You're right, there is apparently no way that such an enormous number of people could live in the desert with limited water and food. However, before I used this as proof of a deity, I would question whether it happened at all. For the record, I also doubt the story of the Tower of Babel, Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, etc.

I am skeptical that there was a time when people didn't believe the heart existed (as opposed to just not knowing what it was for), so I'm going to swap in another example that I think makes your same point. There was a time when simple farmers came to scientists and said, "rocks have fallen from the sky!" The scientists didn't think this was possible, and speculated that the farmers were mistaken, that the rocks had been thrown into the air by volcanos, etc. However, as more evidence was gathered, the scientists eventually were convinced that the rocks had fallen from outer space.

Some people have condemned these scientists for not recognizing the truth. I have read a number of Christians using this as an example of science turning a blind eye to evidence. However, what we see here is not science ignoring evidence, but rather science requiring significant proof before an extraordinary claim is reached. To these scientists, it was much more likely that meteors came from volcanoes rather than outer space, so they favored that explanation. But when there was enough evidence, they went ahead and changed their conclusions. That's how science works.

So for me not to believe in God because I don't see enough evidence doesn't mean that I don't want to believe in God, it means that I don't see sufficient evidence. In fact, at this point, I really see nothing that I would call strong evidence at all since non-God explanations seem more than sufficient for everything. Just think of how much more evidence the scientists in my example would have required if the farmers had told them not that rocks had fallen from the sky, but that God was throwing stones at them.

Let's look also at your statement about your being a young Christian girl instead of a computer. Given the current state of technology, I find it very unlikely that your responses are being generated by a computer, so my thinking you are a person is not a matter of faith, it's a matter of probability. As for your being a young Christian girl, your writing is consistent with that type of person, but for the most part I am just taking your word for that. But if it turned out that you were an old atheist man just yanking my chain I would be, at most, annoyed because I thought we were being honest with each other. I wouldn't call any of this faith.

While we're on the subject, I don't not want to believe in a diety. I think it would be great if someone was out there taking care of me and ensuring justice was done. I would also very much like to believe that my life doesn't end when I die. Who wouldn't want these things? But wanting doesn't make it so, more's the pity.

There are going to be some issues of right and wrong that are relative to culture. For example, topless beaches, polygamy, "bad" speech, child labor, eating dogs or cows, and what I'll call "behavior in the bedroom." There are also some issues that are generally universal, such as prohibitions against murder and theft (although the details vary quite a bit). What is important from my perspective is that in a great many of cases when a group of people is bent on doing something I would consider evil, they are doing so with religious justification. Hitler thought he was "destined" to unite Europe. Islamic terrorists believe that they are doing Allah's work and will be rewarded in the afterlife. I'm sure you can think of many more examples throughout history.

This is really the crux of my point. If we can stop trying to define morality in terms of deity, then we won't have these extreme cases of people doing evil because they think it is what God wants. If the basis of morality was the golden rule, it'd be hard to justify suicide bombings. If you believe that those who don't share your religion are evil and that God wants them to be eliminated, it's actually pretty easy to justify such things.

Thanks for writing! It sounds like you are a young person, so I'm going to give you a bit of unsolicited advice. Think about the person you were talking to at lunch: what was your goal in talking to this person? Were you trying to convince him that his beliefs were incorrect, or were you using your superior knowledge to, in effect, call him an idiot? If the latter, then you pretty much got what you wanted, it sounds like, but I'd say that there isn't lot of value in that, although for the moment it can make you feel pretty good.

I personally think that it's better to call yourself an atheist than an agnostic. Agnosticism is the belief that you can't prove one way or another that God exists, and frankly your taunting of God might seem a little odd if your philosophy includes a fair chance that there is such a thing.

So here's what I suggest: call yourself an atheist, and all you're saying is that you're not convinced there is a God. This has two benefits from your perspective. First, it's practically inviting people to try and prove God exists, which leads to more opportunities for you to demonstrate your knowledge. And second, if you call yourself an atheist, live a moral life, and discuss religion calmly and non-judgmentally, it can really freak people out (particularly adults).

Enjoy!

If that's their reasoning, I feel sorry for them, but they are far from alone. I think the world would be a better place if people spent more time thinking about their deeply held beliefs and why they have them, whether they are religious or not.

Oh, and "Excel Argument" -- I love that.

Which points out something I've long believed -- most people (I don't mean you) really don't know what they're talking about when they use the word "god". "Every religion really worships the same god" and things like that just drive me nuts.

Good for you for continuing the good fight in a reasoned manner. I have heard that there is a greater rise in atheism in the UK than there is in the United States. I'm guessing that people like you are why.

It's true, you don't need a god to call yourself a decent person, but it's a lot more work. An atheist who wants to be good must spend a lot of time thinking about right and wrong. In the worst case, a religious person may just behave as they see fit but "know" that they're good because their religion says so.

That's a bizarre argument, and one that I can't recall having run into before. If the supreme being has limited omniscience, then how can religious people give god credit for those who "miraculously" survive a disaster?

There is a better (but, IMO, still pretty lame) argument that there were no disasters, diseases, or carnivores in the world until Adam and Eve's fall, and that all of these things were introduced as punishment for that original sin. Sounds kind of harsh to me.