I was raised a Methodist so I went to sunday school and then later with the rest of the family to a small chapel. This was a time when religion was regarded by most with indifference and the ever dwindling congregation would never number more than about ten. When myself and my two brothers got old enough to be left at home alone my parents stopped dragging us along and now, years later, the old chapel has been converted into a house. Even the visiting JWs around here are half hearted, they come around exceedingly rarely and when you say that you are not interested they go "Oh ok" and walk away, I don't have to frighten them with a sock puppet or anything. I always found the services exceedingly dull and boring and can remember very little of anything that any of the preachers said.

Having said all that, like so many of your writers, I am not an apostate either, I was turned off religion because of science, both from school and from a ten volume childrens encyclopedea plus other books. My parents always answered kid's questions honestly, telling the truth as they saw it and were never, as far as I can remember, afraid to say so if they did not know. I operate a 'truth and let's see if we can find out together' policy with my own little girl and was gratified to read that one of your contributors was grateful to their parents for having done the same.

On the subject of God, if asked I would say that nobody can prove that he exists and nobody can prove that he does not, it is something that you have to decide for yourself. Every honest atheist I think has to maintain a tiny sliver of agnosticism because no one can ever be sure, but my mind always returns to the purple teapot orbiting around pluto, you can't prove it isn't there but without evidence to the contrary it would be a safe bet that it isn't.

Another analogy that I read somewhere was that I am lying in bed and can hear a clip clopping sound outside my window and can't really be bothered to get up and look out. I am assuming that it is a horse but can't be certain without looking, it could be a zebra or maybe even a unicorn but from my position it would be safe to stick with the horse. Now thanks to the internet I think thet I have gone as close as possible to looking out of the widow and seeing that it's a horse, not only do I have access to free information but also to dozens of books that I would never have come accross in a book shop. On the net then thanks to The Internet infidels, Eric Stocton, Judith Hayes, Biblical Errancy, The Skeptical Review, Bank of Wisdom, Earl Doherty and of course Adrian Barnett. Reccomended books include The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins' book Unweaving The Rainbow, Also The Age Of Reason by Thomas Paine which 200 years ago left Christianity without a single leg to stand on. Two centuries later Christianity is still around but not because Paine was wrong!

I leave you with one last message to all believers and infidels out there, read the Bible! not just bits of it, all of it, It's only a thousand pages and it makes one of the best cases for atheism there is.

Chris Hobson