A Reasonable Man

I think I can come to a fairly reasonable understanding of athiesm.

After all, I've never directly perceived in all of its powerful being in all of its power and glory. My assumption is that such a direct experience with the Almighty would leave me incapable of doubting its Divinity. I've witnessed inexplicable phenomena in my life, but that doesn't necessitate a belief in God. If the inexplicable were guarantees of God's existence, then it wouldn't really be inexplicable anymore.

I can also understand why someone would become so frustrated with evil and suffering in the world, that he would doubt the existence of an all powerful God.

I can see certain social benefits in athiesm. If this world is all we have, if there is no Heaven or Hell, or Divine Judge to sort everything out in the end, then this should motivate us to be even more active in the pursuit of peace and justice. Some people might say that athiesm would lead to anarchy and lawlessness, but I don't think that is necessarily the case. Just because laws would be completely man-made, one does not necessarily have to disregard them. It becomes all the more important to reinforce social harmony, because worldly accord is the closest we might ever get to paradise.

Furthermore, I can understand why someone would think religions lead to chaos and suffering given the track record of religiously-inspired warfare in history and most especially in the religious extremism of the Middle East today.

I can totally see why someone would look at scandals among the clergy and come to the conclusion that religious authority is too dangerous for humans to wield, and that it can be used as a shield for evil men. And I can see why someone might think that religion was invented as an ideological state apparatus to convince people to obey laws.

I can also empathize with a desire to shirk religiously-inspired morality. Relieving myself of sexual morals and concepts of sin certainly looks like it would unfetter me from a guilty conscience, and allow me to do things that look pleasurable.

I can see why belief in an unseen, but supposedly omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient God would seem like a contradiction.

I feel like I can understand the position of the athiest, so how come I never seem to come across an athiest who accurately depicts the way I view the world?