"I would not make it without God."

[downbeatplumb]

This song seems relevant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMbBl4z6Xug

[Aiza]

I'm an ex-catholic. I can safely say that I'm happier as an Atheist than I ever was as a Catholic and I also feel my mental well-being has very much improved since I removed their shackles of indoctrination. What made me an Atheist is when I read the Bible cover to cover and after about a year of research afterwards I came to the conclusion there was no evidence to back it and even evidence to the contrary.

I found I could not bring myself to worship the God in that book even if this were not the case as he is almost certainly represented as being an evil, vain, masochistic and arrogant being. I am more morale than that, so are most people and for that matter so are you.

Does this answer your question?

Not really, since you never established the weakness of humanity. You just said you didn't think there was "evidence to back the Bible". I've read all of the Scriptures (RSV-CE, NAB, Douay-Rheims), the books of the Orthodox Bible, many pious apocryphal works as well (the Protoevangelium ), and I've done a lot of background research (if you like this type of thing, I really recommend the open Yale courses, they're done from a secular perspective) as well and it lead me in quite the opposite direction.

I am glad you are feeling happier now, at the least.

Do you have anything to back this up? If my experiences are indicative of anything, it is that religion has no real bearing on these issues. Another thing to keep in mind is that statistics on these issues can be skewed due to the fact that one group may be more likely to seek help for these problems than another. That means they are more likely to be diagnosed and more likely to be counted.

Oh absolutely:

Religion and depression: a review of the literature.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10480747

Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt

Religious Involvement, Spirituality, and Medicine: Implications for Clinical Practice

Religion and the five factors of personality: a meta-analytic review

The protective effects of religiosity on maladjustment among maltreated and nonmaltreated children

I also can find you a ton of studies about religion's relationship to mortality rates, charity, delinquency, involved parenting, GPA etc. if you care for it. Either way I'm not sure how some people can try to say that 97.5% of humanity is all "weak".

This post is getting much too long!

Now this doesn't necessarily mean "atheists" here, just "religious" vs. "irreligious". Religion covers very broad ground and many religions (incl Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism) do have atheistic branches.

[The Grand Nudger]

I didn't day that, I said that 100% of us were. It's fairly well understood and fleshed out. You can't trust your mind, it's notoriously unreliable. Reliably unreliably, one could say. Case in point, you feel that somehow you have stumbled across evidence for some biblical narrative. Drake disagrees. Neither of you will be able to argue your way into being "right" without referring to something other than your own thoughts. Nothing personal, but my money's on Drake here.

[Aiza]

I was referencing Creed of Heresy's comment that religion specifically was "a crutch for the weak". As such I thought it was a bit noteworthy to point out that in general, religious people do much better for themselves than irreligious in terms of emotional/mental/social stability. (Still can't find any weightlifting stats though!)

If you want to say that all people are weak, then go ahead.