Do you wish there's a god?

[downbeatplumb]

To me the whole subject -- theology, the arts that are related to it, and the insight it gives into people -- is a source of great beauty. It didn't occur to me that I had to choose a side and fight until I started looking at sites like this one. But one thing I have learned -- choosing a side tends to close the mind. It would make me sad to shut out the source of so much greatness.

I tend to agree with you. It was novelists and writers who I credit my theism too, more so than some bland theologian, or some weird or over wrought theology. And I think it was Dosteovky who said "beauty will save the world", and I agree, if anything will save the world, it's beauty.

In my view a great novel, a great work of art, is capable of revealing the nature of reality and life, far better than any work of science. I used to think that people who shared such sentiments were primarily on my side of the fence, so it's surprising and nice to encounter an unbeliever with similar affinities. I'm curious as to see why the lack of belief, what keeps you from believing. Why someone like myself believes, and you don't, when we're not all that different it seems.

To what can I credit my atheism?

Just existing and finding all the arguments for god laughably childish.