Greetings!

[Theistsbane]

Welcome to the forums, perhaps if you share some of your ideas and the methodologies by which you gather info., justify beliefs and analyze info the poeple here can determine whether you're of a like mind. Or you could just jump into some topics that interest you

Wow, that seems like a little more than I really want to do. It says you're a non-denominational Christian. There's not likely to be a lot of common ground there, to be sure. As far as justifying my beliefs, that's what we all do, in every walk of lfe. Humans are the great rationalizers, that's all we do, no matter what it is. I'm not here to argue with other atheists about why I believe what I believe or to get into a pissing contest over who is the better atheist. I've run into that before. There are a quite a few pretentious blowhards on forums like this who, while obviously intelligent, need to leave their egos at the door. Their mantra seems to be "my atheism is better than yours" and they try to persuade others to adopt their point of view. To my mind this is no better than religion. I can't speak for other atheists, but the ones I know are not easily led and are not joiners by nature. We are here to share ideas and philosophies and sometimes to justify our positions. What I mean by "like-minded" is simply that the majority of people here will be atheists, which is common ground. Other considerations as to "why?" or interesting attempts to rationalize their philosophies are certainly food for thought, but ultimately I will fall back on my 30+ years of personal reflections on the subject. Simply put, I am an atheist because I have examined the evidence and found the existence of a god to be unnecessary to the existence of the universe. That's it. Other philosphies are simply other people's attempts to explain to themselves what they experience and while curious, is ultimately meaningless to me. I respect their ideas because, hey, we're all trying to figure this out, to assume we KNOW is the height of arrogance.