Wtf? Why are talking about believing in apples? I don't have to believe in physical objects, that's not what a belief is. The appropriate belief would be "I believe that the grocery store has apples stocked that I can go and buy." Which is still completely pointless towards this argument
Now, for the whole "Why are Atheists Atheist?" part of the topic that people forget about...I will be one of the few atheists posting as opposed to the ridiculous number of christians assuming...
I was raised in the Church of Christ by very loving and conservative Christian parents. I love my parents, I am not rebellious. Never have been. I just have seen enough logical fallacies to not want to be Christian anymore.
One argument that is null and void is the "prove to me that there isn't a God." That isn't my responsibility to prove that there isn't something.
For me, I see religion as something man-made to mostly deal with the afterlife. As humans, we have no idea what it means to be dead, because to be dead, we become nothing, and as living entities, we have no idea what it would be like to be in a state of "nothingness." People want this happy, warm feeling that when they die, everything they did on earth will mean something and that they will never have to truly experience death. This can be represented by Heaven or Reincarnation.
Another one would be whenever you're praying for a sick relative to get well. If the relative is well, then praise God! He answered your prayer. If the relative dies, then it was God's plan. Technically, it's a win-win! Nothing sad about it.
That now brings me to a quote I like from The Dark Knight (The Christopher Nolan movie with Christian Bale as Batman). In it, the Joker tells Harvey Dent: "Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying..." You can watch the whole video clip here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRG1tWQN ... re=relatedEven though I don't think you should blindly accept quotes from media sources as truth, I feel like this one has some validity to it, even if I did take it slightly out of context. People feel much more comforted thinking that there is some "greater plan" for each and every person.
So what does that mean I believe about life is there isn't really a "plan" or any judgement based on how you lived your life? I believe that truly nothing matters what we do on this planet. While this is somewhat cynical and not super happy and full of rainbows and unicorns, that doesn't mean it's not true. It doesn't mean that we are trapped without hope. I see it as the ultimate freeing idea. It means that every mistake we make means nothing, and the goal of life is to live as well as you can and make as much out of life as possible, because there are no "second chances" in an after life or a reincarnation.
Ultimately though, once I decided to become atheist, everything started to make a lot more sense and I wasn't so worried about questioning what I believed. When I was a Christian, I was always worried what some questions could mean. I was always afraid to think what I believed through because I didn't want to go against my parents beliefs and what they wanted for me. But I'm still going to live my life how I want to, not how my parents want me to
Those are just some of my thoughts!
Hope you actually read it, since I looked back and it was a lot haha
And now I realize that I just bumped a topic from the middle of last year >.>
My bad :X
But of course as time went on, I had my own logical reasons why Atheism was the right path to take. 