Happyflowlady made a good point, there are as many grades of atheists as their are religious believers. Some more zealous than others.
What atheism means to me? No more than what's for dinner tonight. My life doesn't revolve around it. I don't givva what others believe as long as they don't inflict their belief on me and complicate my life. That is the only thing that will trigger a reaction from me on the subject hotter than mild amusement.
I live a normal life with a clear conscience without the need of supervision from supernatural beings and can't really understand those who can't. But that's their problem, not mine.
I don't remember ever being anything other than an atheist, as a child I never managed to distinguish the difference between religious fables and fairy tales. They were all the same to me. I do remember being amazed to find that others actually believe that one or the other was real. My poor mother wasted many hours reading me Bible tales etc but her time was wasted other than for entertainment value.
I don't need to either believe in gods or not to live quite successfully, and kindly, and can well do without the hassle and stress some seem to burden themselves with by worrying about what their future will be after death. Why care? We can't control that, those who think that a ticket to paradise can be bought by prayer or any other means are forgetting the creatures that haven't the means to do that, so where do they think all the good dogs go?
I've been good too. Will I go to whatever notion they have of Hell because I didn't waste precious hours grovelling for special treatment? Nope, don't think so. I'll just degrade back into the atoms that formed me, and that will eventually recombine in different form to 'be' something else . I won't care what happens after I die because the neurons that allow me to think anything at all will be dead too. Many can't cope with the thought that the Universe can't get along without them being around in some supernatural form. News flash, the Universe got along very will before we were born and will do so long after we're gone and won't even notice that we ever existed at all.
The more scientifc stuff I read the more confused I get that people choose to believe in legends passed down from millenia ago when nothing was known of how things really work and refuse, or neglect, to understand the Universal processes that explain life (and the whole damned thing.)
I skim the skeptics forums sometimes for the entertainment of watching people fight over their religion with the atheists who have also turned their atheism into a kind of religion. C'mon. What you believe is your personal choice, depending on how you are wired. If anyone knows someone who was made to see God, or left religion entirely because they were convinced by an argument they read on a forum could you please post a link? It must have been one hell of a post.
I can understand the religiously inclined defending their faith, that's how religion gears them to react, but I will never understand why atheists get heated about the subject. What are they defending exactly? Their choice to remain free of supernatural influence? Do these people realise that the results revealing who was right and wrong will never be posted? If the Religious are right then none of them have come back to tell us the score. Atheists don't believe there's anything after death and if they're right then... pfft. No scoreboard there either.
I find atheism perfectly normal and scientific explanations satisfying, but I wouldn't try to coax a believer into abandoning a belief that is important to their well being even though I don't understand it. They obviously need to believe that someone is in charge, and who am I to attempt to deprive them of that comforting thought?
As is evident, I am more than slightly contemptuous of organized religions, but more toward those who are orchestrating the rituals, than of the individual followers. I would be, and am, equally contemptuous of those who treat atheism as a religion to be fought for. It isn't.
It's, to me anyway, merely an acceptance of things how they really are, just part of an unimaginably huge Universe doing what it does. Stars live and die, do they go to heaven? It just doesn't work that way. Living at all is a lottery winning experience, on the Universal scale. That's enough for me. Sad that many aren't satifisified with that amount of luck and want more. Or worse, believe that they deserve more.
