My thoughts regarding this are as follows. Not believing in god apparently sends me to hell. So, logically, even if I had lived 1000 years ago on a part of the earth where christianity hadn't expanded to yet, and I was still a good person, god would still send me to hell for not believing in him. That is a huge douche thing to do, especially because god is supposed to be omnipotent and all seeing and all knowing, therfore, even if I have free will, god already knows how I'll use it, and therefore would have known that he was going to send me to hell ever since he created the universe. Anything anyone does is according to god's plan, because if anyone does anything and it turns out it was against god's plan, that means god is fallible. And THAT means that either god has no plan and just does shit for the hell of it, or that god has a plan and it involves nine tenths of everyone who ever lived going to hell, regardless of whether they ever even knew that christianity existed, let alone had a chance to convert.
My conclusion is that god either doesn't exist or is an asshole. And I refuse to bow down and serve an asshole based on fear of hell. Especially when there is zero evidence that god or hell exists. If I want superstition to be an everyday part of my life I'll choose a less constradictory religion, thank you very much. Like the Australian aborigine belief that the universe was created by a flying rainbow salamander. And has ended and re-begun like 8 times now.
I should also add that atheists and agnostics make up about 1 billion people last I heard. And if you're roman catholic, you can claim to be part of the 1.2 billion roman catholics. If you are not, however, then you are one of the 20 or so other denominations of christian, none of which to the best of my knowledge have more than about 50-100 million members, and none of which agree totally with the roman catholic church.
