Todd to fairness blog, come in please. Fairness blog, come in. (Are we putting our names at the top of our posts now?)

Let's see...

Steve: 'Hodo?'

The Watchmaker hypothesis doesn’t constitute a ‘wrench in the works.’ At most it shows that religion and science aren’t incompatible; i.e. god made the universe with rules that we can learn and understand, made it to grow and evolve, etc.
Actually, when I see your name from now on, I won't automatically skip it. I'll decide whether I have the stamina to actually read it. If not, I'll try again later.

Lance: I think you missed my point. Go read Steve’s second-to-last paragraph again.

I am not agnostic. When you say ‘agnostic,’ people think you just haven’t made up your mind, or you have a ‘maybe there is, maybe there’s not’ attitude. I’ve made up my mind, and there’s not.

Belief or non-belief isn’t something you choose. There isn’t a time in my past when I considered the options and decided to be atheist. In fact, I’ve always been atheist. If it ever seemed otherwise it was because I was a child aping the people around me (apologies to John), because I wasn’t sophisticated enough to express my actual thoughts. [That’s not to say religious belief is unsophisticated.] The point is what you’re asking is impossible. There is no logic chain leading me to atheism. I’ll bet it’s the same for you. The best I can do is to say that I reject religion because I can’t think of a single reason to accept it. Saying that it shouldn’t be ruled out doesn’t suffice.

Side note: Buddhism kind of interests me, but in its pure form it’s nontheistic anyway.