Bullshit.

If God existed, I would really want to believe in him, but right now, if he's out there, he's doing sod all to convince me.

Do Christians not realise that anyone, and certainly all the atheists I know, would believe in God if there was evidence that he existed? I would. I would love to know. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't it be an amazing thing? Getting past all the terrible things God does in the Bible, knowing that God exists would just be a mind-blowing experience, wouldn't it?

But that's the problem. When I say I want to believe in God, I don't want to believe in him without evidence. My head isn't wired like that. I can't do it. I can't take anyone's word for it and just accept it, without some hard facts. Faith isn't good enough. I want proof. Why is that such an unreasonable request?

I believe in a lot of things, of course. I believe that the Sun is about 150 million kilometers away. I haven't measured the distance myself, but I read it in a book so I trust the people who tell me that that's how far from the Earth our Sun is. But that isn't faith. The fact that I personally have not made the measurement does not mean I believe something without evidence. The evidence is certainly available, and I know if I had the right skills and apparatus I could verify the distance, if I wanted to.

Those nice Mormons who keep visiting me gave me this example: when you go to start your car, you believe that there's an engine inside that will make it go when you turn the key. They were convinced that this kind of belief was the same kind of belief that they have that God exists. It isn't. I believe my car will start based on a body of evidence, namely that the hundreds of times I've tried to drive it in the past, it started. Therefore it would be unreasonable of me to believe that any other outcome would follow the next time I tried to turn the key in the ignition.

This kind of evidence is used by scientists all the time. You can never, ever, prove something by repeating the same experiment over and over again. If an experiment gives the same result a million times over, that does not prove that result million-and-one will follow. However, with a million positive results you have a strong body of evidence to assert that the result, whatever it is, 'always' (strictly in inverted commas) follows, given the same conditions. That's proof enough, and you don't need faith to believe that the next experiment will give the same result.

Faith is belief in something without evidence. But that's not good enough for me to believe in something, and to be honest I have no idea why it's good enough for anyone when they are talking about their religious beliefs. How can anyone simply accept such wild, fantastic stories, without any hard, tangible evidence whatsoever? I say 'tangible' because of course there is a book, called the Bible, which Christians will wave around and tell you contains all the evidence they need that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins. And yet, I have a book called 'Mexico and Peru - Myths and Legends' which says that my sins will be eaten by Tlazolteotl, God of Ordure (ie excrement), aka 'the Eater of Filth'. Should I believe in the God of Love, or have faith in the God of Shit? The evidence that either is a real god is precisely zero, so I believe in neither.

Tangible evidence is something you could look at and say, "Without a shadow of a doubt, that is evidence for God's existence". And I would believe it. I promise you.

Which leads me on to a final point. Some Christians will say that atheists do actually believe in God but that they deny it. But how stupid would that be? Do you really, truly think that if I believed that some all-powerful being which could send me to burn in a fiery pit for billions of years really existed I would do anything to piss him off? I don't think so. If someone held a gun to my head and threatened to pull the trigger, believe it or not I would be scared. And I would strongly believe that the threat was a real one, given the close proximity of a loaded weapon as evidence.

Christianity's version of God does the same thing to its believers. The threat of an eternity in Hell is very real to many people, and some are genuinely terrified, so much so that it reduces their quality of life considerably. Living in perpetual fear does tend to have that effect. But fear of Hell is not something I have ever experienced, because I simply don't believe it exists. I don't believe God exists. I have no faith in God, because belief without evidence is not something around which I am able to base my life.

I am unable to believe in God, but if God exists I promise you that I want to believe in him. If he exists, it would perhaps explain why so many people believe in him, but would also leave me with the burning question: why did God turn me into an atheist? I'll let you know the answer if I ever get a chance to ask him, but don't wait up for my call. And I certainly won't be waiting up for God to call to me.