Motivations for the non-belief in God

When I started college a hundred-seventy years ago, I was a Jesus freak. After all, I spent the majority of my childhood, teen, and early adult life preparing myself for heaven. I had heard about these heathens that plagued our country for years, and I knew that I would had to save some of them while in college.I began to explore the different christian youth groups on campus and met a young girl name Sara in one of these groups. She too was raised christian from birth to become a jesus freak like myself. We became great friends. Through her, I was able to meet many other young people like myself who thought we had a special place in God's heart.Beside hanging out in the Jesus freak group, I also befriended many other people mostly from our study sessions. As the first semester progressed, I found myself spending more and more time in the student lounge studying and talking with other students. The conversations about religion and whatnot were inevitable. I must admit that in those conversations I often found myself way way over my depth. Toward the end of the semester, I began to attend the weekly student philosophy debates and learned much about things I had never heard of before in my life.The following semester, I continued to attend the various religious meetings and the philosophy debates. This went on for a while before something struck me. THE WORLD WAS NOT GOVERNED BY MAGIC!!! WHAT'S WORSE, ATHEISTS WERE NOT CHILD MURDERING HEATHENS THAT I HAD THOUGHT!!!Paradoxically, I was a science major, too.How could someone that for the better part of his early life believing in a magical world decided to major in science? The answer was simple. I was lead to believe while growing up that science's only purpose was to praise god.Half way through college I had already lost most of my faith. I think I finally became an atheist toward my B.S.The reasons why I decided to abandon my faith? It wasn't lazyness, like a lot of people seem to suggest. I was more than willing to attend these religious ceremonies every Sunday. Heck, I was attending these prayer sessions more than three times a week. It wasn't because I wanted a convienient way to not have a set of moralities. I didn't start kicking every dog I could find or raping every girl I could get close to. As a matter of fact, I often find my sense of atheistic morality far superior to the typical christian, but that's another story.I gave up my faith because of the total lack of tangible evidence for it. I gave it up because of how much I didn't know back then and how much I still don't know nowadays. I can sit here and give you as many reasons as there are words in this post. But one of the main reasons for my leaning toward atheism was I found myself loving everyone more than when I was a Jesus freak. It was through my non-belief in a creator that convinced me to treat everybody with the respect they deserve. Women are people. Gays are people. Muslims are people. And as much as I don't like it, riverrat and Catholic Scientist are also people And as people, I really can't find any valid reason why they shouldn't be treated or viewed the same as everyone else.You could say that I blame my unconditional tolerance on my non-belief in god.While we were sitting waiting for our turn to walk up to the president of the university to get our degree, I was debating the philosophical and moral implications of religion with a jesus freak. At the time, I was a recovering Jesus freak. I told you this to tell you how important and how much time I devoted to thinking and talking about the issue of religion and how it has changed me as a person. In fact, while John and I were walking up to shake hand with our department head, we were still at it discussing on the pros and cons of religious beliefs.That was a hundred-seventy years ago.A hundred-twenty years ago, I received a long and detailed email from Sara. You see, she was one of the few people that noticed my radical transition from an intolerant Jesus freak to something else as it happened. The email she sent me started off with what happened after we graduated and the various things that had impacted her life afterwards. The main point of the email was that she now has no idea what she is. She had given up her faith much the same way that I had given up mine. She had realized that she was doing everything (praying, going to church, etc.) that she was expected to do as a "good" christian girl. She had been going to third world countries on humanitarian missions and those experiences had shed some light on what the real world was like. Essentially, she found herself developing into a more loving and tolerant person and that aspect of her life conflicted with what she was before when she was still a Jesus freak. Her negative attitude toward non-christians was gone. She no longer thinks that gays should be "cured" or persecuted. Before, she found it impossible to not talk about her faith and try to convert other people. Now she has become a teacher and as a teacher she her the duty, as a teacher AND a good person, to show her students that intolerance will only result in people suffering.On the moral side, I am motivated to not believe in god by the apparent hate and intolerance that come hand in hand with the belief in god. On the "real life" side, I am motivated to not believe in god by the total lack of evidence for such a being. And as someone on this forum pointed out a while back, a being that cannot be detected by any instrument and has absolutely no effect on any physical object bares a familiar resemblance to a nonexisting being.