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

[robvalue]

Who cares about miracles, anyway? At best they demonstrate there's some external being which feels the need to occasionally meddle in our affairs. It doesn't tell us what this being is or what its motivation is. There's nothing I can do about it until it decides to communicate in a sensible way.

They don't even demonstrate that. The most that can be drawn from them is that something supposedly happened. What the cause of that something might be is instantly shrouded in mysticism, often with a political aim, and divorced from external investigation. The believers are insistent on believing it no matter what, and how dare you persecute them for it.

And where do we draw a line, when anything dogmatically expedient is automatically a miracle? The book says the Sun stopped in the sky - it's a miracle! This baby is the only survivor of a 'plane crash - it's a miracle! I read a third-hand account of something that supposedly happened somewhere a century ago; all the explanations are silly - it's a miracle! My headache went away after I prayed - it's a miracle!

You're absolutely right of course. I was being a little generous and granting a free non-sequitur, I didn't phrase that well.