>Ok this is where we start to part company. I am atheist because I was raised atheist. It was a shock to me to realize this because I have lots and lots of well thought out, logical reasons for understanding that "god" is imaginary; and yet, I have to honestly admit that I now understand that the opinion came first, before the reasons.>I used to think this way, now I consider it hubris. To believe or disbelieve in god or gods, one has to think ABOUT god or gods. Now, if one is of a scientific bent; and interested in the question of whether or not god/gods is plausible; and one chooses to consider the evidence; then an open mind has GOT to reach the conclusion that god/gods are wildly implausible, at the very least. HOWEVER. Most people go about their business with such thoughts far, far in the background of their world view. I'm a black musician, raised to believe that white people are an inferior sort of devil. I take up "jamming" with a white scat singer and my mind is open to the possibility that, like my friend, honkeys are just ordinary people, like me. Does the "god made the world" view I adopted from my parents and culture invalidate my open mindedness? I say not. A musician cares about music, not theology OR science. Because *I* care about science does not entitle me to demand that it inform everyone's world view, any more than my lover's interest in politics would entitle her to demand that I take a political world view.>People who believe in God or gods mostly have chosen not to think about their existence as a question. In his new book Dennett gives an example that really got my attention. Imagine a society where one sacrifices goats to insure healthy childbirth. The young mother sacrificing the goat doesn't run through an intellectual exercise about the costs versus benefits of goat sacrifice, any more than you run through an exercise in microbiology when you wash your hands after taking a shit. She KNOWS that one must sacrifice a goat. She has seen healthy babies born after a proper goat sacrifice, and she's seen problem deliveries caused (from her point of view) by botched sacrifices.It is NOT sane or even useful to question the practical "knowledge" we get from our culture. That's the whole point of culture, from a biological point of view; it keeps us from inventing the same methodology over and over again. Since I KNOW this is true, how can I diss someone for doing what, as a biologist, I know that Nature has equipped her to do? With very good reasons, in fact?>Phooey. There's buckets of evidence, far closer to "proof" than a million other things we accept as "true". We've had this conversation before also. . . it is not difficult to demonstrate that "gods" are simply impossible. And impossible things don't exist.>Totally appropriate, in my opinion. As the owner and principle moderator of BookTalk you have as much right to have an Atheist web site as the Idaho Catholic Register has to keep a strictly Roman Catholic viewpoint. So in the end, I come to the same conclusion while strongly disagreeing with the reasoning that got you there. If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984