[The Judge]

I'm pleased that you're actively trying to understand more of the atheist persepctive for what are obviously quite personal reasons. I hope that it has become clear that we're not all the same and that sometimes, some of us have thought a lot about our position and had it attacked many times to which we have mounted countless defenses.

Many of us have grown tired of doing so and sometimes this results in a shortcut to ad hominem attacks and ugly slanging matches which gets no-one anywhere very quickly.
Occasionally attemptoing to engage an interlocuter can result in some more meaningful exchange as it has done with you.

I myself had been absent from this forum for a while as I was feeling a little uninspired and like a broken record but enough time has passed that I am now back to resume the worthy struggle against irrational belief.

As a scientist by training an ex-catholic to boot I enjoy trying to understand the nuances of human experience and belief and picking them apart in the process.
Exploring a persons own epistemology however will quickly tell me how deeply they have really considered their own faith and in many cases it is unfortunately not very deep but in those in whom more than a cursory self-examination is evident, often an inexplicable "becasue I just feel it is so" seems to stifle any further rational inquiry.

Happy new year to you too.