"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side, kid."
-Han Solo, smuggler, pilot, all around scoundrel

Warning: All religious persons- abandon all hope, ye who read beyond, lest ye hate me for my views.

Eric, myself, my family (to some degree), Patrick, and as far as I can tell, David, are the only (open?) atheists that I know of.

I have nothing against religious people, don't get me wrong. My two best friends are Mormon and Pentecostal Christian, respectively. My ex-girlfriend is Catholic (long story.........let's just leave it at that, shall we). However, I don't hold with it. At all. Just like I don't believe in luck. Personally, I think religion is a wonderful set of mythology (thanks, sis, for the wording there), and if it helps people get through each day or gives them justification to do good things that don't make the world suck, then by all means, let them have their views. Like my dad, I believe that relgion is a set of loosely defined values of morality that promises eternal reward or damnation for respective good and bad organized since the beginning of modern civilization and used to keep the masses in check. People are inherently stupid and greedy. Without (ancient) "religion," (modern) "law," or possibly (future) "bioengineering," people would do what they wanted when they wanted. Religion keeps people from abiding from their biological and internal desires through the unknown.

10 Ways to convince me to believe in organized religion.

10. Give me a reason that some people believe that God will send children's souls to hell if they have been baptised or born in a non-civilized world. How fair is that? If that really is true, then I really don't want to believe in God.

9. Solve the problem of all the souls of the existance of mankind filling up "heaven" and "hell". Think about it. The entropy and enthalpy of the problem alone would cause the destruction of the known universe itself! Besides, am I supposed to believe that I will enjoy spending eternity singing praise to God if I make it to heaven, or that I won't eventually get "used to" eternal suffering if I am to be exiled to hell?

8. Prove to me how a "soul" can exist, when it has no medical or scientific explanation. (given, if god does exist, I can be major-league wrong here, but I'm gonna stay with the home team for right now)

7. Show me a God that is perfect, and actually has time or the patience to deal with humans. If I were God, I think I'd work on some other, less inherently stupid creature. Maybe Koala bears, or penguins, or something like that.

6. Prove that the Bible was really "God"'s words. Put another way, how come biblical prophets were hailed as prophets and martyrs, and modern day people that claim to have "spoken" to God, are tagged as lunatics and morons?

5. Have people stop gaining profit from bible sales and "Savior" shirts...........do you really think that God/Jesus/Bishnu, whatever, wants you to profit from the capitalism of his/her name?

4. Unite the entire world in one religion, without force (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!). If god truly did exist, and his was really was the right way, then how come so many people are convinced that their version is right?

3. Prove sufficient parts of the bible for me to believe it. Jonah's whale? Yeah, I'm sure that Jonah really went out drinking, went fishing, and caught some bass, bragged to his wife that the fish was really :::stretches arms out::: this big, and before you know it, it's a whale.

2. Rewind time and show me, firsthand, biblical "miracles." Personally, like modern day magicians have proven, people can be decieved. Ancient people were stupider than we are (don't get cocky........future people will make us look dumb) and thus can be fooled. Only through science, observation, and study can we unmask the truth.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology can seem like magic" -Arthur C. Clarke

[and no, I do not mean that Jesus was an alien.............although that would explain quite a bit.........]

1. Rewind time and teach religion it to me as a child as truth. This, I am positive, is the number one reason people believe what they do. Children are impressionable, and old habits die hard.