Hi, Darwin:

Although you profess to be an atheist, it appears that you believe

yourself to be god-like, in that you generalize and make some rather

sweeping generalizations about believers!!  Mighty austentatious of

you!!

I, for one, believe in God but do not believe that the bible is meant to

be taken literally, nor do I believe in God because I am afraid of

"negative retribution from [my] God if I do not behave righteously."  I

have a free will, and have chosen to believe, because I have tried a

life void of spirituality and found it to be somewhat dissatisfying, to

say the least.  I was, at best, cynical and judgemental.

You are, of course, free to express yourself and your opinions, as I am

free to express my own.  You may, however, want to study a little book

called "Logical Self Defense" - it points out some common errors made by

those who are presenting arguments for or against a particular issue or

topic. It also suggests ways to avoid those errors. If you are going to

be the Guru of atheists, it might be a good idea to do some homework!

 In particular, it may help you to avoid making general statements based

on opinion rather than sound statements based on logic and reasoning.

In other words, you seem to have forgotten the basic formula of any

sound argument:  if a = b, and b = c, then a = c.  If you jump to

conclusions, or make generalized, speculative statements, you may cause

those who have minds to think for themselves to doubt the validity of

your arguments.  And, then, only the mindless would follow you...those

who just believed whatever you told them and did not think for

themselves.

Surely, you wouldn't want that kind of a following, now would you??