Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

There are so many different faiths. How do you know the holy book you have been brought up with is the true one? And if all the others are wrong, what makes you think your holy book isn't wrong too?

Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

These beliefs contradict each other, so they can’t be all right

If I’d been born in ancient Greece, I’d worship Zeus and Aphrodite

But failure to disprove something is not a good reason to believe it.

The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.