Tim asked:

Would the world be better off if everyone was atheist?

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No. We would lack a lot of beautiful art. Religion has been an inspiration. Also we could not visit and
aesthetically appreciate cathedrals and churches.

Wars in the name of religion come and go. What is of value remains.

Rachel Browne

I teach religious education (no I'm not a Christian, no it's not just christianity these days etc etc!) and
this is a question I get asked a lot.

So point one; in my experience god receives a very narrow definition (especially but not exclusively
by atheists) a vaguely (but not usually accurate) Judaeo-christian definition, however god as a
concept is infinitely vaster than that, or we wouldn't have so many different religions. The majority of
people I have met when they say they do not believe in god are basing their lack of belief on the
absence of a guy sitting on a cloud in a long nighty! Or alternatively on the fact that they do not
believe Jesus to be their personal saviour. Neither of these is true atheism, to truly be an atheist is to
say 'I do not believe in any force or power that created me, there is no purpose to my existence, i am
an accident and my life and death have no significance or importance of any kind, nothing that i do
has any value except the biological reproduction of my own gene patterns through my children' (that
at least is my view — the perennial problem with philosophy is that there is always another view!).

Ah, I hear you cry, but what about the people who have thought it through carefully and feel that they
can say the above, and I do not deny that there are such people, I know a few, not many but a few. I
put it like this — Everybody believes in something, even 'I do not believe there is a god' is a statement
of belief, all your actions are controlled by your beliefs. You don't jump off a cliff because you believe
it will kill you, you don't know it will! All you know is that everyone else who has tried it has died and
from that you form the belief that the same thing will happen to you!

If that's too up-in-the-air for you try this — god is something that is omnipotent, omnipresent and
omniscient. That is the classic definition and in former days everyone who had a problem for solving
would turn to god, a question for answering they would ask god or needed a witness to an event they
would refer to god. Today in England (and England is by no means typical) if we have a problem we
turn to science, a question for answering we turn to science, a witness for an event? Science again
(who do you think invented CCTV?), we expect that science can make us better when we are ill and
can provide everything we need and can answer each and any question we put to it, not only that we
regard it as infallible, there will always be electricity, what we can't do now we will be able to do soon,
everything can be put right given time. Its not true but we believe it. Have we not turned science into a
god?

In answer to the question then I don't think atheism is truly possible, humanity needs its gods, needs
things to cling too. Would the world be better if we didn't — no, much that is good and beautiful and
worthy of respect and admiration has come out of religion, however the world would be a better place
if we all made an effort to understand each others gods, and to value them as facets of our own.

Alison Robertson