Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?

[johan]

Atheists, why do you reject the idea of God, and why should I?

This is two separate questions so I'll take them one at a time. 

First bit. I'm an atheist because after examining everything in evidence having to do with the question of theology, it is only the choice left that I can comfortably make. Like you said, there's the whole complete lack of evidence for the existence of a god thing. But that's just the beginning. Then you have to look how many different and contrary theologies exist and how many of those contain some form of this is the only true religion and our god is the only true god and if you worship any other god you'll burn in hell yada yada yada.


For me, when that question is considered, it becomes very easy to accept that at least some of those theologies/gods are false. Which leads to the question of how exactly did such a huge and otherwise successful religion come to exist if its completely false. And the answer is either someone somewhere way back when was the king of all grifters or someone somewhere way back when meant well and was, for lack of a better way to put it, just plain wrong.

And once you come accept that as a logical possibility, the question becomes ok how can one figure out how to tell the difference between all those false religions and a one true religion should it actually exist. And if you're me, the answer to that question is that one cannot tell the difference. Which for me means its very likely there is no difference. Which for me means there is no true religion and they are all much more likely than not to be false. Therefore for me, being atheist is the only choice left that allows me to sleep at night without feeling like I'm fooling myself.

But that's me. Which brings us to your second question. Should you be atheist? Absolutely not. No one who has to ask someone the question 'should I be atheist?' should ever be atheist. The only people who should identify as atheist (or any other theology) are those who come to that decision on their own and could not be swayed from it by anyone.