FACTS to Consider:

Here are some facts to consider:
Fact: the human race has been around for hundreds of thousands of years.

Fact: the concepts of an afterlife, of gods, spirits, etc. have only been around for a few millenia.

Fact: these concepts were invented and promulgated by ignorant barbarians as an attempt to explain the world around them, before there was a such thing as science or epistemology.

Fact: most of the books of the bible were written by people who were never there, as second- or third-hand accounts decades or even centuries after the events they claim to tell about.

Fact: the books of the bible have been heavily edited over the centuries, with passages or even whole books being re-written or omitted to fit the theological and political climates of the time.

Fact: the books of the bible have also been subject to extensive errors, misinterpretations, and differences of opinion in interpretation as they are translated from one language to another and from that to yet another language.

Knowing all this, how can religion be viewed as anything BUT the invention of men?

I know this may not be what Christians want to hear, and I doubt I'll do much harm their faith; faith is remarkably impervious to reason. But we atheists are nothing like what the church leaders are fond of charicaturing us as. We are freethinking individuals who are able to see the Big Picture without the blinders of religion.

We do not live in despair, quite the contrary; freethought is incredibly refreshing, liberating, and empowering. We are not nihilists, but lovers of life who see it as all the more precious because there's no eternal afterlife. We do not need the bribe of heaven or the threat of hell to be good people, we believe in being good for its own sake. Through science and reason, we know more about the true nature of the world we live in than your religion could ever hope to offer.

Source(s):

Our quarrel is with irrationality, wishful thinking, superstitions, intellectual dishonesty, and all other forms of thinking that keep mankind mired in darkness, ignorance and hate