"Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?"

Rabbi Marc Gellman asks "Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?"

First, we are not threatened by the idea of gods anymore than we (and presumably you) feel threatened by the idea of the easter bunny. Neither exist except in people's stories. We feel threatened by the things people DO in the name of gods such as fly airplanes into buildings, crusading around and killng thousands while torturing others and building big walls to exclude other peoples. I hope you recognize which religious groups of people were responsible for these atrocities. Don't forget that slavery is condoned by the bible. One can read the religious books to support any position that is politically expedient - and people do and then they kill their neighbors. Doesn't that tragedy make you angry?

There just isn't any evidence for gods. I'm a scientist and, although we do not know everything (otherwise I'd be out of a job!), it is clear that we already know enough to exclude god from all the traditional places such as the formation of the sun, earth and yes, formation of all living things all the way down to the deepests molecular levels.

Given that it is clear that there is no purpose, we must wake up and take responsibility for ourselves and our planet. Camu's idea was as wrong as thinking that there is a purpose given by a god. Have you ever asked someone what they think god's purpose is? They invariable say they don't know. This is the most important thing that god does for people, give them purpose, and they don't know what the purpose is!

So we must chose our purposes and take responsibility for everything that happens.

There is nobody guiding what happens. The recent tsunami and Katrina have dispelled that myth. If there is a god then it is really a horribly mean creature to have done those things. But we understand the physics behind waves and winds and we had better recognize that the winds will get worse if we keep on driving our cars without figuring a way to reduce their emissions. We are responsible! So an atheist gets angry because people are not taking proper responsibility for what is happening on the planet and we identify the problem as religion and beliefs in fairy tales about gods. The sooner we get rid of those primitive ways of thinking, the sooner we can get on with figuring out how to live sustainably on the planet.

We get angry when we think about the phrase "be fruitful and multiply" and hear about people with 23 kids. We know that no gods will rescue us when our population hits the limits of the planet. We recognize that there is a finite amount of oil and we WILL RUN OUT. Whether it is the peak last year (as predicted) or 10 years from now does not matter - we WILL RUN OUT and belief that some mythical creature will save us does nothing but make the situation far worse because we waste our time. People are sitting around thinking that god will take care of everything while we calmly go over the cliff.

What's not to get angry about? A vast majority of problems on the planet are caused by a belief in gods!

Listen to this: Letting Go Of God by Julia Sweeney

There is still hope for you: let go of god and become a responsible person.