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

[Balaco]

It's been quite a while, so I should probably pop in and mention that I'm still looking into the validity of religion, though I've toned it down over the past few weeks due to various reasons. Tomorrow I'm planning on setting aside a lot of time to focus more on the facts and the "strongest" theistic arguments, now that I've gotten a clear picture on the general perspective of atheists and theists.

Can I just say, I think it's kinda grim that the first thing you're reaching for when it comes to support for theism is arguments, and not... you know, evidence?

Arguments are not evidence, and in fact in cases like this they're most often what people use because they don't have evidence. Theistic apologetics largely just try to arrange gaps in knowledge into a god-shaped hole because they don't actually have anything to fill it. Why god must exist, because they have nothing to show that he does.

And here you are, buying into it. My suggestion to you would be to raise your standards.

Maybe I should've put more clarification into that post. I'm not going to just use arguments (from either theists or atheists) as pure evidence, but I'm going to be looking for evidence to supplement them, to see for myself if a/theistic arguments hold any ground.

At this point I'm more or less neutral rather than buying into theistic arguments, with my mind beginning to lean away from the Church if anything -- due to how valid atheist explanations/evidence against God seem to be, and due to the many apparent logical fallacies I'm beginning to see within religions.

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I would like you, Balaco, to consider the following paragraph written by a traditional Roman Catholic priest and theologian (emphasis mine):
       

When it comes to the moral legitimacy of repressing the spread of false doctrine within the Christian commonwealth, however, we are faced with a solid block of near-unanimous and unwavering insistence, for over a thousand years, on the part of the pastors of the universal Church in communion with Peter's successor. We are talking about a doctrine which Pope Leo XIII declared personally in the encyclical Immortale Dei to be "the necessary growth of the teachings of the Gospel." 6 In regard to the contrary doctrine (i.e., that government repression of anti-Catholic doctrine for the sake of the common good is intrinsically evil and unjust), Pius IX declared that this "evil opinion" must be "absolutely held as reprobated, denounced and condemned by all the children of the Catholic Church." 7 We are looking at a doctrine to which the Bishops of the Catholic world gave their absolute and zealous support, endorsing its enforcement by the civil arm, with varying degrees of severity, for century after century; a doctrine with the gravest practical implications for the lives of millions of people, both Catholic and non-Catholic; a doctrine which formed one of the pillars of that whole world-view and civilization known historically as Catholic Christendom; a doctrine which the learned and holy Pontiff Pius XII endorsed as recently as 1953, when his Concordat with the Spanish government prohibited all exterior manifestations of non-Catholic religions in that nation. If the Church had really taught at Vatican II (as is claimed by my critic Anthony Lo Bello 8) that all this was "intrinsically wrong" - an absolute, per se violation of a natural human right - then I say that the Church would have utterly destroyed her claim to be the divinely-appointed interpreter of the moral law, guarded from error in her definitive teaching by the Holy Spirit in every age of history. Roma locuta est, cause finita est would in that event have become nothing more than a hollow boast, a cynical joke, an untenable superstition. How could any intelligent person ever trust a supposed oracle of truth which contradicted itself so calamitously and ignominiously as this?

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt57.html

Note the last two lines.

Now, if you have a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, who is highly educated, acknowledging the fact that the Catholic Church's Magisterium has contradicted itself, how can you possibly continue to believe that any of it is true?  Especially, with Francis now allowing unrepentant, public adulterers to receive the Holy Eucharist, the so-called Blessed Sacrament, the "Sacrament of Sacraments"?

The so-called "genetic fallacy" applies in multiple instances here.  Muslims, even educated ones, are not converting en mass to Christianity, and nor vice-a-versa.  Therefore, the arguments of so-called Christian apologists are not convincing.  However, even the Iranian Academy of Sciences accepts Darwinian evolution:

http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13901.aspx

What does that tell you?

Let me make sure I understand your points.

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The Roman Catholic Church prides itself on being correct on every last one of its claims and teachings (and from what I understand, the Church uses this as a primary basis for its "validity"). The Pope is traditionally seen as being absolutely infallible in all of his teachings. Yet here we see blatant examples of apparent contradictions in the Catholic Church. We see Pius IX not merely altering Catholic teachings from what Leo XIII asserted...we see him absolutely condemning his teachings and calling them evil. Even today, Francis is now going against previously "solid" Church teachings.

In short, the fact that the Catholic Church has ever changed its teachings or has ever had contradictions renders the Church as invalid -- considering it insists that it has never changed its teachings.

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If I'm gathering this all correctly, I think I may have to agree with these points. To be fair I haven't looked into the Catholic perspective/counterarguments of these points as of posting this response, so I'll have to see if they have any validity.