Hi, I'm the anonymous poster, actually I just sent this email to the moderator and they posted it for me and invited me to sign up so I have, especially since so many of you responded to the post.
Anyway, I get the feeling that you guys generally think God is an imperfect pathetic sadist. So based on this opinion of him you say he doesn't exist because you don't want such a God to exist, but your opinion of him doesn't change the truth regarding his existence or non existence.
We think the god that christians worship is a douche bag. Well, not really, because we like douche bags better than that. But it's true, the dude the christians worship doesn't come across as too nice a guy if one uses standards not concocted by those hard up for a trip to heaven.
What we really think is that there is no god. That makes it a lot easier to be critical of those who disagree. Because most of us have no idea why they believe such things. Not in the face of all the rapidly increasing knowledge about our world and the universe.
Who cares what you think the creator should be like, or what kind of creation they should have made, lets just look at the evidence, for example, life comes from life (we all know this to be currently true), so until someone shows this scientific law to be false then we should be thinking that the first living cell must have come from a living being regardless of how hopeless we think that being is. Please be aware that our opinion of "God" has a huge bearing on how we conduct research and we need to be open and honest about how it affects our research.
We care when we are ostracized and told that we are hated more than most other sorts of people. We care when we are forced by circumstances to either participate or go out of way to not participate in religious activities that we disagree with. We care when we know that religion has been and is a huge source of friction between peoples. People die over this stuff regularly, and none of it can proven to be even kinda-maybe true.
Science looks at where the research takes them. You seem to think that life has to come from life, while science is looking at other explanations, which seem more likely than this god guy. And you can't have it both ways. Gobs of christians come here and tell us god is not living in our plane of existence, so as a source of life, he wouldn't count. And of course we always ask where a god would come from. How someone can not imagine how something could have come from nothing (not what actually happened, as per science, but christians always insist that is what science is claiming) but think that a god could always have been is beyond me.
From my perspective as an atheist, it takes rather impressive mental gymnastics and lots of personal tomfoolery to actually believe something for which there is no evidence other than a few stories from some long dead people. I would think that jc telling the crowd he would be back in their lifetime and then not following through would be enough to discourage the masses, but nope, that's just something else to be hopeful about.
The whole story is about hope, both here on earth and in the afterlife. And the irony is that hope has led millions to early graves, other millions to participate in atrocities that no human should ever experience, and dooms further millions to one or the other fate in the future. The many many religions of the world, often at odds with their non-brethren brethren, should in an of themselves make it obvious that each one is a fairy tale.
I assume you don't believe in any of the hindu gods. How hard is that. Do you have to do any soul searching before you reject vishnu as a probable deity? I doubt it. And using exactly the same process (which goes like this: "You gotta be kidding me!"), I reject the christian god just as easily.
Once christians start living longer, better lives, have fewer health issues, freely share their wealth with others and start dying with smiles on all their faces, I might sit up and listen. In the meantime, I have no reason whatsoever to take either their or any other god stories seriously.
Well, maybe Odin, but even he is a little iffy

Edit: Fixed quoting error.