(October 20, 2013 at 8:52 pm)arvind13 Wrote: Atheism is a late bloom of a Christian passion for truth.
Atheism has been around for as long as the claim that gods exist has been. Long before Christianity.
"Among the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, Samkhya, the oldest philosophical school of thought, does not accept God, and the early Mimamsa also rejected the notion of God.The thoroughly materialistic and anti-theistic philosophical Cārvāka (also called Nastika or Lokaiata) school that originated in India around the 6th century BCE is probably the most explicitly atheistic school of philosophy in India, similar to the Greek Cyrenaic school (435 BCE)."
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.
