Religon is, for all intents and purposes, the single most important social factor in existence. faith, or the lack thereof, can fundamentally change the way one person views another. disputes to the point of war arise almost daily over nothing more then a religous view, be it faith or a 'holy' symbol or even just a piece of land they claim to be benevolent. it can also take a person who's life is in shambles and give them the inner strength to overcome their personal obstacles.
before i go in depth into the 4 'spiritual' groups i would like to state that i was raised Christian and was a devout follower of the faith until i was 10 years old, at which point i started to question the nature of things and realized the inherent flaws in what i had been showed to believe...
(sections marked with a * contain ideas either copied directly or slightly modified from 'An introduction to Atheism' by David J Schwartz)

the Theist cries that god exists and He is our creators. they are self deluded fools.

i am constantly shocked at how people can be so incredibly blind and follow with rightous zeal something which is so obviously flawed. the concept behind religon itself is not wholly unbelievable yet the evidence to support its falsehood cannot be easily ignored. christians consistantly seem to stare straight in the face of obvious truths and gladly turn away choosing instead to continue with their delusions. this is totally beyond me, i cannot conceive of how someone can be so naive.
i've had many debates with many christians and seen quite a few sides of their argument. one common trait they all have is the ability to obliviously bulldoze past logical evidence that they are wrong, with blind faith as their only support. these are some of the most commonly heard arguments.

*"MY PERSONAL RELIGOUS EXPERIENCES PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD"

a perfect example of this argument is a case presented to me a number of years ago by a die-hard christian i knew in high school. evidently she became very depressed and one day decided to commit suicide by jumping out of her 2nd floor bedroom window (the fact she thought this would kill her casts doubt on her mental ability to begin with) but before she jumped her shirt snagged a nail and she bumped into the frame of the window. this impact caused a small figuirine of Jesus that was on her dresser to fall over. she then assumed the visage of Jesus is what made her shirt snag the nail and stop her from jumping. that statue falling over was proof it was caused by God

are we then to believe that if slipping on a banana peel which makes us fall over and not walk out into a busy street just as a car zooms by means we were saved by a banana god? such futile attempts to explain random events such as this are a rather sad excuse for trying to justify the existence of god and prove nothing beyond the fact the person proclaiming this was divine intervention is desperately scrambling for something to cling to and will grab at any string possible

"GOD HELPED ME OVERCOME MY SELF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR"

an example of this is a bible-thumper i work with who will go into a long narritive on how we was a strung out drug fiend raver who was destroying his life until he found god. he is utterly fanatic on the subject and steadfast in his beliefs, arguing his point even when i have pointed out flaws in his logic even he couldn't explain

in this instance it is obvious the devout simply went from one form of addictive escapism to another. they ruin their lives with chemical abuse, realize the error of their actions, wish to stop but don't have the spine to do it themselves, thus diving equally deep into religous zeal. they attempt to prove god exists because only when they believed in a deity did they get the inner strength to overcome their addictions, when in fact it was the introduction of another drug that drew them from the first. their devotion to the faith is nothing but a substitute to the drug they couldn't live without, and often in these cases they are blindly following something with no real reason why. when i asked him what 'brought him to god,' whether it was a priest, a friend, if he looked into himself and just found faith, he always replied with something resembling 'i didn't do it and neither did anyone else. god showed me the way because he loves me. god put his faith in me i had nothing to do with it'
this proves only that his own insecurity made it so he couldn't overcome his problems on his own and proves nothing but his own weakness

*"GOD EXISTS BECAUSE MY BOOK SAYS SO AND MY BOOK IS HOLY"

now this argument simply baffles me. while granted the bible is the greatest work of fiction even written there is A. no proof it was written by a god or proof the writer was inspired by a god, and B. proof the writer was NOT inspired by a god

A. no proof it was written by a god.
this is closely tied to another argument used by christians, the proof of the third party. someone said they saw something, so that makes it true. nearly all evidence of any sort is historical, citing incidents that happened in the past, and it has been proven that history is subject to how the recorder presents it. there is no physical proof the book was written by a god, no proof the writer was divinely inspired. in fact i have yet to meet a christian who could even tell me where the bible came from which in itself casts doubt that its origins are anything extroidinary

B. proof the writer was NOT inspired by god
for the moment lets assume the bible was written by inspired thoughts given to a person or persons by god. there are two versions of the same bible, so the other who wrote the second section must have also been divinely inspired. this would mean that two individuals were inspired, one to write the old testament and one to write the new. this also means that every person who has ever rewritten the bible was inspired so they could properly translate it. this also means that everyone who has worked on or changed the bible was inspired in the same way and had the same interpretation of that inspiration, otherwise the bible is completely meaningless because it in fact not written by anyone who was inspired in any way
these days it is not hard to find a copy of the bible that has been adapted to appeal to the younger generations, the stories changed to sound more 'street smart' or 'hip' so kids will become interested in them. are we also then to assume that everyone who changes the bible to fit the views of others was also inspired? and if not doesn't that prove the current copies of the bible christians cling to so desperately are in no way evidence of their god because the text itself they use for proof is not divinely inspired so therefor cannot give truth about the deity.

*"MAN IMPLIES DESIGNS, SO THERE MUST BE A DESIGNER"

this argument has merit on the outside, but once you get past the intitial levels it's flaws become more and more aparant. the basic idea is that man is so complex and so perfectly suited to his enviornment and his task that god must exist to have created him. this case is flawed in two main ways:
first, if an archeologist were to dig up a rock, they could not simply say 'this rock was created by a primitive culture and was designed to be a weapon' simply because we know a rock can be used as such. in fact the archeologist could not even be sure the rock WAS used as weapon in the first place without checking for marks of some sort, any indication it was used in such a manner. and even if such indications were found that still does not prove the rock was created to be a weapon, it just happened to fit that function.
the same can be said of man: simply because we fullfill a function does not mean we had to be created in order to do so. there is nothing about human kind that that does not already exist in nature. while granted we have certain aspects of our brains that are more developed, on the same token an elephant has muscular devlopment far beyond anything a single human could ever possibly achieve, so the mind argument is not valid. all things in nature have their way of explaining themselves, there is nothing so extroidinary about humans it can't be found in anything else, therefor the 'design' concept becomes void
the second flaw of this logic is that man has a purpose and that is why he is the way he is. what purpose? to what task were we designed? looking over the history of our race our only 'function' on a planetary scale has been to warp and destroy nature to suit our ends, so we obviously have no real purpose. of course an argument to this is our purpose is not for us to know, as we cannot understand the will of god, which brings us to our next point...

"THERE ARE THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE WHICH CANNOT BE EXPLAINED THEREFOR GOD MUST EXIST TO EXPLAIN THEM"

god has an agenda that no one knows about. his will is not for the comprehension of humans, and we should not try to understand him. however they also preach about the will of god and how he wants this or that, it is quite common for christians to use their 'god' as justification of the prejudice. in this instance they are stating they understand parts of god, though they claim god cannot be understood. they defeat their own argument for us

*end completed section. will finish this when i get around to it*

the Atheist demands that logic prevails and god cannot exist. they claim understanding of something which inherently cannot be understood

the Agnostic claims they have not seen the evidence to be persuaded either way. they are undecided and therefor their opinions are untrustworthy

the Infinyte states that all things are possible but so far no one has it right. they take a steadfast position of neutrality

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