I suppose you've never heard of the pythagorians ...

I know this wasn't addressed to me, but as an atheist, I hope you don't mind my answering it as well:

Several atheists, like myself, haven't reached some sort of unassailable conclusion that God Does Not Exist.  Instead, we simply feel that we haven't been presented with good enough reasons to believe in a god.

I'm not sure that I'd agree that everything is "perfect," either in the universe or on earth.  Actually, I tend to think that things are far from perfect.  But anyways the idea of everything working "exactly as it should work"... by whose standards?  What scientist knows how things "ought to be"?  How do they know that?

The acceleration due to gravity on earth is ~9.8 m/s(s) right?  Is that the perfect acceleration due to gravity?  How so?  If it were slightly different, would we somehow know that it was off?  Or in that alternate reality, would we conclude that that was actually the perfect condition?

i can't 100% prove that God does not exist, nor can you prove that he 100% does exist, so there is no way to win the debate, here, i have my reasons for concluding that he almost certainly does not, im sure you have yours for thinking he does. i have no real problem with people believing in a god or gods, what i take issue with is religon itself and its values and the way many churches and religous groups conduct themsleves, i know many christians and some muslims who are perfectly nice intelligent people, sadly there are others who arent so nice or intelligent who go aroung blowing stuff up and interefering in politics and what not.

Yes. I happen to know a lot about them and btw.. it's pythagoreans.

First off, not believing you have adequate proof that god exists puts you in the agnostic camp ...

Secondly, the gravitational constant of the earth is not perfect because it is a particular number of because of what it means for us in this point in space ... it is perfect because it demonstrates that gravity relates in an exactly rational and uniform fashion across our universe as we know it. If gravity simply didn't work in Utah for some irrational reason that would demonstrate that gravity was imperfect.

So much for atheism not being a religion

I don't believe that god does exist ... I am an agnotic person which means that I believe that no proof can be generated that god does or does not exist, but I am open to the possibility that a higher power that some might describe as a power could exist. My belief is entierly supported by Godel's incompleteness theorum.

I have to ask. You say there are there aren't harsh consequences for disbelieving in  you and God? Yet you claim to be Christian, have you not mentioned Hell at any point to her? I would imagine that would be the harshest of consequences and threats to a small child.

Remember the Jesuit saying: "If you give me the boy for 7 years I will give you the man"

That is a scary phrase but also true. Natural selection has made it so as young children will almost always listen to their elders and this can be abused easily.

Jesus also had alot of "morals" that most modern and civilised people wouldn't touch with a barge pole today. For Example:

He made his disciples leave their family and forever excommunicate them if they wished to join him.

Luke 14:26

"If any mancome to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple"

The nice warm feeling I as a atheist get is mainly from doing good things for my friends and random people because it improves the world in a small way, not because I feel I will be rewarded for it (or punished if i don't)

Havign experienced life as both a kind of "step" parent and now as a real parent i would say that being a good parent is far more rewarding for you AND your child. You can be nice to your children as a parent you know? BE it by playing with them, helping with homework, taking them out places, teaching them things.  It's not all shouting and them not wanting to tidy up! :P

It is comparatively easy to " force" someone to have faith, believe in God, to believe in one particualr religion.
See my previous words on the subject in my response to my first quoted object. Also, I am afraid the reason that so many debates devolve in to what seems like a "rant at religion" is purely because religion has been a major (if not the main) instigator in a large amount of humanities suffering since what are effectively prehistoric times. I'm not saying that religion hasn't done some good things (For Example the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is sublime in its wonder) but that its negatives far outweigh the positives it has brought.

I can answer this question for myself fairly easily.
1: Natural selection - It requires a crane style evolutionary system to create the illusion of design. Small advantageous changes to species that make them more likely to survive, this can appear to be "designed" but this is purely a human problem, it's mostly because we are so used to seeing designed things around us and we have done ever since we gained consciousness.   Usually i hear "But what use is half an eye?" at this point so I'll be slightly more specific by posting a link that explains this far more eloquently than i can - http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB921_1.html
2: God cannot have simply "just have existed and always been here" any more than a hurricane could rip through a scrapyard and assemble a complete Boeing 747. In this situation God would be infinitely more complex and infinitely larger than any concievable object.
3: People often argue that God exists because of "Good and Evil" they often also use this same logic to rationalise Satan. Because God MUST be pure Good, Satan MUST be pure Evil. I personally believe that "Good" and "Evil" are neccesary for species survival.
For Example: If we went round "parasatising" one another to support ourselves we would never have invented any farm tools and would still effectively be animals, therefore a certain amount of selflessness is a survival trait.
If we went around killing each other with no remorse we would have wiped ourselves out before we'd even set foot on the ladder to civilisation, hence not killing other humans for sport is a survival trait.

EDIT ADD EDIT ADD EDIT ADD EDIT

The universe IS not perfect, but i can understand how it would seem to be. After all, it's "perfect" enough for us to be here.

However - If the conditions in the universe had been different in various ways, who knows if anything would be here?  The odds are that something would though, even if it was a unique confined event as we at the moment seem to be.

The odds are that anyone who DID exist in this hypothetical other unverse would also believe that the particular balance of their universe would be the only likely one for life to exist in.

Also: The colour and composition of the natural elements (IE. Those that can occur naturally as opposed to those created by a man made nuclear reaction) could be predicted because of the way that atoms, molecules and matter in general works. It also helped that the scientist who predicted the composition of such elements had elements that WERE known on hand to study in order to make his predictions which were later proved correct. For more about the History of the periodic table read more here - http://www.rsc.org/education/teachers/learnnet/periodictable/pre16/develop/mendeleev.htm

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Ill leave this here. Hopefully my answers have been respectful enough to not drive anyone insane and smart and rational enough to have people question their beliefs a little more, for if there is a God he would be the ultimate scientist and wouldn't hold a very high regard for unquestioning minds or ignorance! :D

oh, ok, but do you see my point, im like 99.99% that god does not exist, certainly not in any form that humans could comprehend, so i guess you could say that i am 00.01% agnostic. i believe that if the universe was created, that it was made by advanced aliens rather than some supreme deity(s), kind of like the ancients in stargate, they arent gods per say although some may percieve them as such, however they exist on a higher plane of existance beyond most humans comprehension.

Much like myself you CANNOT refute Gods existence, you can only make a statement much as follows?

"Whilst I can't disprove God, I can however use available evidence from science and the world to reduce his probability of existing to a sufficently small number as to be almost absolutely certain he does not exist. If I am ever presented with solid evidence of his existence I would accept it."