Atheism

Today I am going to discuss a topic which I was reluctant to talk about for quite a while. Indeed, some of you might be offended. So I am warning you before you go on: this topic is about atheism and why I am an atheist.
I am sure all of you have, at some point of time, questioned the existence of God, unless you are brainwashed from your childhood into believing so. Having the freedom to think and believe whatever I like, I finally concluded that there is no such supernatural being in the universe, called God. You might have concluded otherwise, and I am not trying to force you into being an atheist, like me. No! That is what religious fundamentalist do. They, for some reason think that everyone should convert to their religion. What I am trying to do, is give my view point on this matter, and would urge you to give a moment's thought to my argument, if you feel that it has a little bit of chance of being true. It is also my duty to warn you that this is going to be long.
Before you tell me to look around this beautiful world, so diverse and complex and say that this proves the very existence of God, I would ask you to look around ( specially if you look around a developing country) and see how a innocent child, who I think has committed no sin, goes to bed-bed? What am I talking about? The pavement to sleep on- empty-stomach, so many people born with incurable diseases, so many people die( and I don't think all of them would be sinful) in terrorist attacks such as 9/11 or 26/11 ( I must remind you that these terrorist activities are also done in the name of religion.) And death is not the worst. There is torture, forced labour and who knows what other kinds of brutality. The all-loving creator must be really hard hearted to let us face all this, even if all this was some kind of test. If all this is indeed a test, we should be torturing suspects in order to find out whether they are guilty or not. If they can endure the torture, we can be sure they are innocent ...otherwise, they are guilty. A perfect system for judiciary! Based on the laws of God!
Assuming that you take my above argument as true, we have ruled out the existence of a all loving and powerful being, but we still haven't ruled out a creator who is hardly concerned by our mundane mortal lives. In fact, a little bit of me hasn't still ruled out this possibility but there is no compulsion for a creator to exist. The universe could have unfolded itself. And why should a supernatural be responsible for creation? (Mind you, the entire universe was not created in one week.) If everything in the universe needs a cause,then there should not have been anything since even God needed a cause. Saying that God didn't need a cause because he is beyond all laws isn't really convincing. You are assuming the God theory to be true to prove it is true ( which is fine), but you use no other established facts. You cannot take the accused's word of his innocence in any case, ignoring all the other evidence. If we begin doing so, all our jails will be empty. Also, what exactly is the creator doing before and after creating our Universe? Sitting idle is not something Mr. All Powerful and Super Intelligent is likely to do. Yet I am not ruling out the possibility that there was a force which set the clock into motion, and its work ended. SO I can also be called a deist-atheist.( as Wikipedia says, Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion.) So my conclusion is , if God exists, (s)he cannot be defined by our religions today.
"Right, you are saying we should stop believing what we have been believing since the beginning of civilization?" That's something you might be saying. Why not? People believed that the earth was the centre of the universe. Is THAT true? NO! People believed that the earth was flat. Is THAT true? NO! If people hadn't been ready abandon these theories and accept facts, would human society reach where it is? In fact, I think human development is slowed down by religion. In a country like India, where there is plenty of scope for development, the government's time, energy and money is wasted trying to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing each other. Had Galileo and Copernicus been allowed to spread their scientific discoveries earlier, the following developments would have come earlier and today we would have been a step further.
It is comforting to believe in something more powerful than us, but is it any different from telling someone, right when they are on gun point, that they are perfectly safe? Also many people do good things in the name of religion, or rather fear of God and being thrown into hell. But really, it is better to do good things because that is what you are supposed to do rather than because of fear. And the last argument which people use is believing in God means being humble. They seem to be suggesting atheists are very arrogant.I think, denying a supreme being and believing that all humans are equal isn't called arrogance.
Note: I am not saying religious people are wrong. In fact, many of them are really compassionate and loving because of religion. But why do we need God who'll throw us into hell for not doing good. Why can't we have a good moral character by ourselves? I would gladly welcome your polite and un-rude counter-arguments and replies.