I am a natural born skeptic.
I had no problems rejecting claims of: alien abductions, Bigfoot, ghosts, homeopathy, dowsing, etc, etc., based on lack of demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument.
It hit me one day, that I was not examining my god beliefs with the same level of scrutiny as all those other supernatural claims. As soon as I did, almost immediately, my god beliefs just fell away.
It is my contention, that atheism is a natural outgrowth of skepticism, correctly applied to the god claim.
I had no problems rejecting claims of: alien abductions, Bigfoot, ghosts, homeopathy, dowsing, etc, etc., based on lack of demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument.
It hit me one day, that I was not examining my god beliefs with the same level of scrutiny as all those other supernatural claims. As soon as I did, almost immediately, my god beliefs just fell away.
It is my contention, that atheism is a natural outgrowth of skepticism, correctly applied to the god claim.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
