"What is emotional about deciding there is no god?...." FHN
Most of the time, nothing....
On the other hand, a religious conversion is usually based on very strong emotions.....
"There isn't any factual evidence of the non-existence of God. ..." FHN
face/palm slap....
I've explained it before; I'll explain it again...
The Bronze-Age Middle-Eastern god that you learned to worship from a VERY early age, based SOLELY upon the words of the bible (after all, you weren't studying or being taught about the "holy writings" of the Q'ran or the Talmud or the sacred scrolls of Hinduism or of Buddhism, when you were a kid, were you???), has only been "around" - written about, spoken of, worshipped - for around 4,000 years. The oldest fragments of the bible known of, so far, are only around 3,500 years old, and giving another 500 years for oral tradition... Around 4,000 years, as of the information available today.
There are many "gods" and "goddesses" that were worshipped LONG before the bible's "gods" were "written" of - invented...
Again, that BIZARRE behavior that you - and others - have, of claiming that "somehow" this "god[s]" that was invented by Bronze-Age Middle-Eastern nomadic males, is the "oldest" deity - is frankly just plain nuts...
Also, as has been pointed out NUMEROUS times before, YOU WOULD NOT HAVE YOUR VERSION OF "god" IF YOU HAD NOT BEEN BORN AND RAISED IN THE WORSHIP OF THE BIBLE "god"...
"And I repeat, not all men and women of science are atheists. ..." FHN
Noooo, but the majority are.... And in the general public, the number of people who are becoming atheist - or at the very least, non-religious - is increasing with each coming generation... In the U.S. and first-world countries, that is...
" ..."Evidence" says one thing to you and another to me. .." FHN
The very fact that you put that into "quotes", indicates the lack of value that scientific data holds for you... And again, I point you back to the fact that the desert god that you were taught to worship, was not "in existence" until VERY late in human history - the last 3,500 to 4,000 years... As that is when the FACTS of evidence for "his" worship, first show up...
Zid