George Plimpton > wrote:
> *could* get to live, is for people not to
> consider the fact that they are only keeping
> these animals from being killed, by keeping
> them from getting to live at all.
> Goo/****wit - 10/19/1999
>
> You, Goo, think the animals "pre-exist" - not in dispute.
>

The fact is, no religion is actually more likely to hand you truth or
salvation than any other. If any of them are right about God and God's
rules, there's just no way for us to know which one it is. If there was,
we'd all have picked the same religion by now.

That means atheists understand that no person believing one religion
over another has any real justification for doing so. Communication
styles, rituals, and norms - these can differ between people and still
be true in their contexts, but statements about the ultimate, like
"Heaven can only be reached via Mormonism," have no grounds.

Atheists aren't gullible, either. We understand that the burden of proof
rests on extraordinary claims, and that Occam's razor is a useful
thinking tool dictating that the simplest explanation for the way things
are is also the most likely one. Atheists believe in things that really
work - medicine is more effective than prayer for health, and reason is
better than blind faith for learning.

Chance is a tricky thing to fully understand. A lottery winner might
thank God she won, and a lighting-strike victim might thank God he
survived (rather than cursing Him for the inconvenience), but did God
really cause these things to happen?

While the lottery winner thanks the heavens for beating such amazing
odds, the lottery company has made sure that there would definitely be a
winner somewhere. It just happened to be that one woman. Meteorologists
know that lighting just has to strike somewhere when it storms. It just
happened to be that man, and credit for his survival belongs more to the
doctors who saved him than to God.