First, you solved your own riddle. Maybe, just maybe, it's religion that they don't care for. Organized religion certain has enough flaws for a rational person to not want to be a part of. Second, if you are only talking about rabid atheists who are hell bent on converting you, then you are probably right. But the there are plenty of atheists not in that vein. They simply don't care whether or not there is a god (which doesn't make them agnostic, since agnostic means that you don't *know* whether there is a god). In any case, there are plenty of nuts who believe in god. There are plenty of nuts who don't. That's simply a result that there are plenty of nuts around. You have yet to show that atheists contain a higher percentage of nuts. (no, your good doctor's studies gave no such statistics, I looked). You failed to produce them when I asked for them.
you miss the point. you assume design and a designer because that's all you've experienced in this world of gadgets.
History seen some of the greatest atrocities in the name of religions and in the name of God, as well in the name of other mass movements both theistic and atheistic in nature. Yes, there are plenty of nuts who believe in God, the nuttiest would be the ones who claim they know God...rather than just humbly admitting a practice of faith in God. However, I don't view God as the creator of religions. I see that man does that, and even when saints and prophets preach that the people need to love God and love their fellow man, as soon as those prophets and saints are gone from the earth, the "normal" human beings take over and preach in the name of the saint or prophet, but distort the initial spiritual message of the prophet or saint. The more time goes on, the more the original message gets distorted and perverted. What remains is the creed and dogma, and none of the real spirituality that came with the truly spiritual person who taught man about loving God and loving his fellow man. Why can't a distinction be made between God, and what man does in the name of God? It is hard to get the statistics you are looking for. Dr. Vitz made a decent case for the common childhood wounding of the atheist he studied, just as I can make a case that alcoholism and or drug abuse has been in the family of every president in America since Ike. You may not observer the angry self righteousness of the resident ET atheists, but you are not paying attention if you claim you don't see it... You may think their anger and self righteousness is justified, but I suggest that resentments, anger, and self righteousness are not the hallmarks of mental health...
Alright. We don't disagree on religion. So on to god. It's logically impossible to prove god doesn't exist. It is also logically impossible to prove that god exist. The by *your* analysis, wouldn't it be just as valid to say that people who believe in god is a product of mental illness too? It's impossible to prove either way. So either decision is perfectly valid.
I believe God is all things to all people, so if killthesunshine thinks God is and "it" then that is what he thinks... I don't have such a limited perspective, as I don't believe in a God that is limited to an "it" status...
Is it logically possible to know what will happen tomorrow? Do you logically know that you will even wake up? Or do you have faith that you will wake up when you go to sleep? Imagine thinking that you might not wake up tomorrow, then having faith that you would definitely not wake up tomorrow... Think you would be able to sleep tonight if you had faith in the idea that you would not awaken tomorrow if you slept tonight? Faith is practiced constantly by human beings. Faith the tires won't blow out, faith the brakes will work, faith the driver next to us won't turn into us, etc. All unknowns. But we survive because our mind has faith that these things won't happen. Someone who is seriously mentally ill has no faith in things working out, or they have an extreme paranoid faith. Yes, faith is inescapable. What many of the atheists do is judge what other people should have faith in, just like many theist judge that others should have faith in their concept of God. The atheist have faith in science, fine by me. I have no problem with that as long as they don't impact my own personal faith or practices. Live and let live. So is faith in God wrong? No one has shown this to be true. It is not known, and so far not knowable that faith in God is wrong. Is faith in non God wrong? No, not at all. Is carrying anger and resentments against people simply because they have faith in God a mental illness? Yes, I believe so. It is like racism is a mental illness in a way, a person is judged by the color of their skin, and all members of that group are judged on the color of their skin. If atheists judge all theists to be wrong, when there is no way to verify their belief as being wrong, when psychology doesn't label belief in God as a mental illness, then yes, the atheist are suffering from some mental illness if they have resentments and anger toward a person simply because that person believes in God or peacefully practices a particular religion. I have found very few atheist at ET who are live and let live types, who can just accept that someone believes in God and are okay with that person's choice...
You can cross the word "atheist" from your statement below and add one category and you would still be right. But that's not what you said in your original post, where you equate the not-acceptance of the existence of god as a mental illness. You statement below is quite different from that thesis, and a very acceptable one at that. But then, the thesis below is a specific application of a general sentiment that the irrational hatred of another person who does no harm to him based solely on ideology is a mental illness. Who wants to disagree with that.