everyone vanish instantly and save the world's people and animals the suffering of being drowned?) Since these all sound like tall tales to me, I think god is probably a tall tale, too. If the Bible said there were talking fish, I would not believe it until I saw one myself. (The bible does fittingly claim the existence of a talking ass.) Likewise, the Bible may say a god exists, but I still will not believe it until I see one myself. Most people I meet, however, do not realize that I am first a freethinker, and only an atheist because of applying free thought to the evidence available to me. The reasons I have for being a freethinker are actually rather different from the reasons I have for not believing in a god. We all need humanity, not religion; reason, not faith. "That's pretty harsh," some say. I ask why. It seems reasonable to me that if religion vanished from the earth, but was replaced by the entire human race working humanely together, nothing would be lost, and everything gained. Thus, we need humanity--that is, our own humanity, as well as the entirety of the human species. However, we do not need religion--it offers nothing that cannot be gained through other means. It also seems reasonable to me that if people lived by reason instead of faith, a great many tragedies would be averted, and an equal number of advances would be made, especially in human behavior. I do not claim this as a recipe for utopia, only for significant improvement. How many times do we find ourselves saying of a criminal or a politician, "They are just so stupid! Any rational person would have acted entirely differently." A criminal or politician can have all the faith we want them to have, but they will still do stupid things--and that is the problem. Thus, we only need people to act intelligently. We can do without faith. In fact, the "faith" of Islamic suicide bombers and abortion clinic murderers is actually a real threat t...
