That would be especially true if it was just some guy playing with us for entertainment. Do I really want to give the guy the satisfaction of worship if he has done all that to us already?

Yeah, that's not really atheism then... there were some religions that held that kind of belief.  More Agnostic then anything.

Not nearly as depressing as say... the summerians religion. 

"The gods created us to serve them, and once they're done with us they're going to throw us a way... to an afterlife of eternal torment."

No one was saved in their religion. 

The sumerian religion definitly wasn't one of convience.

Hard to say.  I mean if it wasn't for him, you wouldn't exist anyway.  

Depends on your persepective.

I know a lot of people would love one of those worlds too...

i'd probably be too much of a panzy to own one though.  I'd feel to bad about things....

Even if i made a model of a world just like this.

I'd feel bad even if i made a "perfect" world because a "perfect" world really doesn't give you any satisfaction without corresponding bad to fully appreciate good times....

and a world where people get exactly what they deserve... (the good get rewarded bad punished) doesn't work either because i'd feel bad punishing people and it'd rob people of any free choice really.  Why would people do bad things if they knew it was only going to result in punnishment?

I personally find the Summerian one the one that I don't like the least. There's no, If this then good if this then bad. It's all, you will be damned no matter what happens, live with it, sort of deal.

And yes, I've never considered myself an atheist, but neither have I ever considered myself anything close to religious either. I'm willing to accept what happens, if it happens, and I only believe what can be proven with our limited tools. Currently all our tools point to anything being able to affect our universe in any way, and to the fact humans are just collections of cells that symbiotically "evolved" together for better survival, no sould no nothing else.

Given this and the fact that I'm from a former soviet country and absolutely despise manipulation and blind faith, and you can see why I'm not so fond of religion at all as it stands. But we disagree on the blind faith in religion part so let's not start that up again. This thread turned a lot more philosophical than I thought it would have a day ago.

I don't know.  I'd argue that vacuum fluctuations point to our universe being effected by other dimensions or something we can't perceive... etc...

To me it seems more likely that things that things don't "pop up" out of nowhere so much as they cross a plane in which we can't see.

Much how 3D actions would be perceived by a 2D man.

To answer your question, Have you ever read Flatland or Sphereland? Absolutely great novels, in terms of sci-fi concepts. I read them back when I was a kid and I'm sure they had an impact on me and what I believe in.

Nope, but flatland has been explained and paraphrased in a number of my classes.  Really a great way to explain a great number of things.  Also explained in books i've read on physics and the like.

It's one of those books i've never gotten around to reading.  I should next time i hit a slow point in work.

I just got through reading a bunch of JD Salinger books.

The relgion his characters have is really interesting as well... it's like an amalgamation of them all really.

I will admit, I have not read anything by Salinger outside of Catcher in the Rye, and that books is one of my absolute favorites, right up there with The Count of Monte Cristo and a bunch of sci-fi books. I've come to realize that sci-fi is our age's philosophy. It allows authors to propose something and explore its through effects through writing. Just recently there was a book where the story revolved around the fact that a device was made so that people would be able to pirate physical things, like medicine, cars, and the like, not just software.

That actually sounds interesting.  I'd agere about Sci-fi books being kinda like philosphy.

I hadn't read a Sallinger book until last week.  Honestly.  I just found the religion his characters tend to have really interesting... cause it's an amalgam of a number of religions, and it's treated as if it's just the normal thing.

The ones i read were "Catcher in the Rye", "9 stories"(collection of short stories" "Franny & Zoey" and "Raise the High Beams/Introducing Seymore."

They're all good.

I didn't read too many classics as a kid because i always ended up just picking random books from the library and ended up with mostly nonfiction stuff like "A wealth of nations", science books and history books...

and Sci-fi books actually.

If you are into sci-fi I highly suggest City and the End of Eternity, By Simack and Asimov respectively. They will blow your mind.