My name is Eric and I am a logical atheist.  I grew up in a secular home that placed no emphasis on religion, although I had many Christian friends while growing up who invited me to church services and events.  I have to say that I am impressed with my parents' ability to keep their personal views on religion to themselves until I was ready to talk about such topics sometime in my early 20's.  I'm not sure I could exercise such restraint myself.

In my late teens and early 20's, I started to question my place in society, religion, and the world.  I attended church services, prayed, and attained a college degree for my chosen profession of computer science.  I think the event that ultimately released me from this path of worship was reading the bible cover-to-cover, Old Testament and New.  I found the stories unbelievable and senseless. For the next few years, I probably would have classified myself as agnostic Deist.  I leaned more towards the idea of a god existing, but I had my doubts and had a hard time verbalizing or rationalizing those beliefs.  I generally supported religious causes that seemed good and thought of Atheism as a kind of an angry cult. The god that I believed existed was not the Christian god, and definitely not a god concerned with the happenings of our personal lives.  During my college years, I struggled to pick a major, although I was certain I wanted a career in the sciences of some kind.  I took many classes that have nothing to do with my current profession; biology, chemistry, anatomy and physiology, physics, and a slew of math courses designed for scientists and engineers is just a sampling.

My atheism didn't materialize until my late 20's when I met some co-workers that were atheist.  We started having discussions about religion that sparked my interest in learning more about religion and it's inability to satisfy my desire for knowledge about our existence.  I read a number of books from renowned atheists, studied the history of the Christian bible, where it came from, who wrote it, and why do so many people think it reflects the thoughts of a supernatural being.  I am currently studying Astronomy and have recently purchased a telescope to entertain this newly acquired knowledge.

I would now like to explain my rationale for coming to the conclusions I now embrace.  Here are some common arguments that I have to address first.

Depending on the source, about 33%(2.1 billion) of people in the world are Christian.  Isn't that testimony for credibility?

No, this is a logical fallacy called appeal to common practice.  At one point in time, the majority of people on the planet thought the Earth was flat.    Plus, 21% (1.5 billion people) of the world is Muslim.   The numbers of people that believe something have no bearing on truth.

What about the historical evidence for the bible?

The bible is a very old set of documents, written by many authors over vast amounts of time.  Many of the authors are not known and many can't be verified.  The books of the bible have a vast number of contradictions and logical problems with regard to science, history, and  the very claims the bible itself makes. Here is a link to a huge list of contradictions in the New Testament alone.  Plus, there are big questions that can't be answered about the content of the bible.  For example, a hoard of Jews roaming the dessert for 40 years should leave some artifacts behind for historians to study.  In fact, there is no evidence of this at all.  Parting the Red Seas, a global flood, plants created before the Sun, a flat Earth, etc. are all great examples of ridiculous claims presented by the bible.

Let's not even consider the above paragraph.  Let's assume that we can verify the authors of the bible and can piece together a better paper trail of the biblical texts.  That still is only historical evidence.  Historical evidence is great for examining our past and our ancestry, but when something claims to be absolute truth that affects our actions, how we live, which laws we pass, and the nature of the universe itself, well, there better be a little more than historical evidence.  Science better align with the claims made in the bible.  There are many instances where this is not the case.

What about the biblical prophecies?  There are many of them that have come true.

I don't agree.  I will admit that after examining handfuls of prophetic claims, I had to stop looking.  Plus, all the major religions of the world claim to have prophecies that prove the validity of their scriptures.  The ones I looked at were either circumstantial, self-fulfilling, or very vague prophecies that could be applied to any number of events.  A convincing prophecy should make a specific prediction that comes true on its own, exactly as predicted, and not made to come true by those who wish it to be.

But I have had a personal experience that proves that god exists.

That is fine, and it may be good enough for you, but I have not had your experiences.  Furthermore, you cannot honestly expect me to believe something based on an experience you had.  There are too many flaws with personal experiences.  They are very prone to being influenced by emotions.  Many of us have times of emotional weakness in our lives, like during recovery from substance abuse, physical trauma, divorces, deaths, and acquiring and losing wealth.  These are all examples of people feeling like god is affecting their lives.   These are very real feelings that shouldn't be shrugged off, but there are much better explanations than injecting god as rationale for these emotional experiences.  If you think you have an experience that doesn't fit the above criteria, please share it in the comment section of this article, as I would love to hear your story.

You have nothing to lose by believing in god.  But, if you don't believe in god and you are wrong, you have so much to lose.

Just because you believe in god does not make you immune to this question.  What if you are wrong about the religion you have chosen?  What if one of the other religions is the correct one?  Many religions of the world appeal to that same element of fear.  Plus, you are implying that I have a choice as to what I believe.  Sure, I could say that I believe your religion, but it doesn't mean that I actually believe it.  I can't just make a willful choice to believe in something that I don't.

The conclusion I have come to has been weighed against a lot of evidence.  I am not making any claims about the nature of the universe.  People of religion make a claim about their religion being absolute truth, so I ask them, "What evidence do you have of this?"  To date, I have not seen or heard convincing evidence at all, therefore I reject their claims.  It is my belief that there is no god because I haven't seen any evidence for a god.  It does not mean that there is no god, I just haven't been presented the proper evidence, and it isn't for lack of trying.  Sure I have a great many questions about how we got here, and that is why I am interested in science.  It aims to answer these questions, and just maybe someday, it will.