Atheism; It Is Not for Me.

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I do not subscribe to or advocate any religion. In saying this I must include atheism as a religion. It has its own dogma and an egotism that matches any religion known. Atheists look at religion and say that there is no proof and absolutely no rational basis to believe in God. There may be some truth in this statement. It is he next step beyond that is the one where I start to have problems with atheists. They then proceed with the statement "there is no God". I find this statement equally egotistical, on a par with those that say there must be a God because I believe in him or her. The atheist claiming with certain knowledge that they know beyond any reasonable doubt that "there is no God” goes beyond reason and becomes dogmatic. Anyone who states that something must be true because they believe it is true is not relying on reason. When asked for proof that God does not exist they simply state that it is not necessary to prove a negative. While this statement is true, I beg to differ when making such a broad sweeping statement, is necessary to provide some kind of empirical support. The fact that "I know it so it must be so" just doesn't get it. God in one form or another has been around since the dawn of time. The idea of a God has carried the human species through a lot of very difficult times. The whole God concept has united people and allowed them to form cohesive group's larger than kin group's. I can think of no society or culture that has lasted more than two generations without having some form of God. While God, as the great sky brother, probably does not exist the concept of God in the myths surrounding God seemed to somehow be important to our survival as a species. We really have no credible evidence of anyone meeting or talking with a God. Does that mean it is time to discard the concept of God? Not yet!Atheists all seem to have some kind of idea as to why the concept of God was created. These run the whole range of speculation. Was God created for the purpose of political control or that the whole concept of God merely an early attempt to answer the question of why are we here and what are we all about? We don't really know. What we do now is that the concept of God seems to have been an important factor in the survival of our species. We cannot read the mind of a man who lived sixty thousand years ago so we have no real understanding of the origins of belief. I just cannot bring myself to jump on the; There is no God bandwagon. I do not believe in God as most people define her but I am not ready to discard the idea of God. I just don't know and I do not share the atheists’ egotism. I'm not even sure I need a God and my life but I am equally unsure as to whether I do not. What I do know is that the myths that we have created have been important to our survival. Man without myth is man without imagination. If we subtract the religions from the great civilizations of the past what do we have left. If we take the gods away from Greece how much of the art and philosophy, that is the foundation of Western culture, would we have left. Not much. Having no certainty about God is more than a little bit liberating. My thought and imagination are not constrained by dogma. I am free to seek knowledge and answers. I do not have to fit the knowledge that I do find into any preconceived belief.