My conclusions have not come about from any determination to choose a camp and stick to it. It is precisely because I have thought critically that I have reached my own opinions. I used to go to church, I have seen how religion works within a small community and I have made a study of the bible. I am in no way closed off to any idea, the assertions I made were merely what I got out from my experience, and clearly it is my own opinion. This is my belief, it is impossible to ever have absolute truth and I am not pretending to make such a case.
The problem with the religious mindset is that often evidence and revelation are treated as interchangeable and equal in terms of theory. I have looked at the world and come to a conclusion through what is available in terms of evidence. A religious person may well question his or her own beliefs, but this is acting contrary to the will of the church, which thrives on unsolved mystery and uses faith (or delusion) and revelation as its only answer. It requires obedience and a 'leap of faith' to believe in religion, it is not the same for science.
I don't believe in God because I believe that the amount of evidence disproves its/his/her existence. I personally don't believe in organised religion not because I am closed minded to its ideas, but because I have thought critically about how it works within a community. It depressed me when I saw a chanting homogenous unit, never questioning why they are there on a Sunday, happy in the notion that they act as a 'flock', almost legitimising an unquestioning outlook. To me I reached the conclusion that this was a divisive force that quashed scepticism through the use of dogma. Somebody else may have a different diagnosis and see the same thing in a different light, such as this was a splendid representation of community spirit in action.
This topic is about belief and why you believe it, I did not realise I had to provide a utopian solution and demonstrate that a secular alternative would be better. As I said that is my belief, as subjective as anyone elses. I am an atheist (or 99.9999% atheist) because of the evidence that there was no creator. I am an anti-theist because even if it was proved that God existed I would never sanction the human created institutions that apparently he/she/it needs for his/her/its worship/. Nor would I sanction unconditional obedience to a totalitarian creator, whose own morality and machinations seem to me to be questionable. If he is powerful enough to intervene then he has not been in anyway deserving of respect considering all the problems that blight the earth and the universe. If he is not powerful and does not intervene as in a deistic perspective, then he does not need all the material and dogmatic human creations that glorify his existence.