Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
The biggest mistakes, though, were agriculture, and cities - but that is another story.

I am currently reading a book about medieval England, and boy did they need Gods to get by! For 90% of the population life was unbeliveable hard, and few lived to be very old.
You contradict yourself. Agriculture allowed the development of cities, which allowed for specialization, which allowed for the advancement of technology, which helps to ease the burdens of workers and lets us build hospitals and train doctors and fight diseases, allowing us to live longer, more productive lives.

It is easy enough to reject gods if you are not directly depending on things beyond your control, like farmers, sailors, soldiers etc. But I think most of us tend to pray or have mascots for charms in such situations - circumstances beyond our control. Even atheists.
We are all dependent upon things beyond our control. Earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, all are beyond control yet can kill us at any time. The solution is not to succumb to fear and terror and blame it all on the will of the gods. The solution is to learn what is causing these things and then learn how to control them. Or at least how to avoid them.

And who do atheists pray to? Other atheists? A lot of good that does. And I honestly don't think that many people actually believe in a lucky rabbit's foot. After all, it wasn't all that lucky for the rabbit.