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

[robvalue]

Don't worry, I'm going to stick around at least until I feel like I've made a genuine conclusion about the existence of God.

Currently I've been looking a little more into why Christians believe in God (I've seen some ideas about how God could be a manifestation of our own ego, for example) to gain some perspective before I look into the ontological/teleological/etc. arguments.

Good to see you're still here

The question of a genetic creator is very different to a specific, interested intervening one. The existence of the first isn't even worth worrying about in my opinion. Is this reality created or not? It's all the same stuff either way. How does it change anything? We just have to get on with things as best we can.

It's pretty easy to show that the "personal" gods people think they have relationships with are almost certainly not all one particular being: this god generally agrees with everyone about morality, and the specifics of our origins and destiny, while people disagree with each other. If this is a single being, the best thing you can say is that it's failing to communicate so badly that you can come to virtually any conclusion. This doesn't fit with the level of intimacy and certainty people tend to describe.

So this seems to suggest there's a distinct interventionist God for each person, who happens to agree with them and acts in their interest. Or more reasonably, these things exist only in the mind. The placebo effect and confirmation bias are incredibly powerful, and can reinforce pretty much any strongly held belief even in the absence of any evidence. I'd suggest investigating these more.