In the first post in a series of posts on this topic, I would like to begin with the reason for writing this, many people from where I come from have never really contemplated the idea that there can be a world without any God or that the God Hypothesis is indeed a hypothesis (a very poor one at that). I would like to explain some of the concepts so any devout rational thiest reading this can at least understand the arguments and beliefs of atheists like myself. so here goes..

as defined in the online oxford dictionary:

Atheist - " Disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or Gods ".

Agnostic - " A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God "

Theist - " Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures. Compare with deism.:

Deism - "Belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind. Compare with theism.

To more elaborately explain the terms, something I copied from infoplease.com

Theist, Deist, Atheist, Agnostic

A theist a person who believes in the existence of God or gods, especially belief in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.

A deist believes there is a God who created all things, but does not believe in His superintendence and government. He thinks the Creator implanted in all things certain immutable laws, called the Laws of Nature, which act per se, as a watch acts without the supervision of its maker. He does not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, nor in a divine revelation.

The atheist disbelieves even the existence of a God. He thinks matter is eternal, and what we call “creation” is the result of natural laws.

The agnostic believes only what is knowable. He rejects revelation and the doctrine of the Trinity as “past human understanding.” He is neither theist, deist, nor atheist, as all these are past understanding.

Reading up to this point, everyone must have an idea on what their stance is and what it means (just so that everyone is on the same page)

incase you are one of those who has a slightly different stance or claim to have a completely new stance or not sure, maybe you should try take this test to figure out.
Note. The above test is no fool proof way but a very good indicator to figure out on which die of any of the above you are.

moving on, coming to why I am an atheist, I would like to keep it simple and concise, so I will bullet point my main reasons (note I have way too many to list them down)

1. Lack of any evidence that God exists.
2. Stories and literature ( I consider creative art) cannot be used to support your claim.
3. God as a concept is in my opinion a manifestation of early man's fear and rationality and written historical records have yet to overpower this pre historic fear and false belief in a creator/god.
4. Religion is root of most evil on the planet and its better we get rid of it.
5. Just because some use God as their hope and motivation doesn't mean it has to be forced upon everyone.
6. Science has always made better predictions than religious text.
7. Santa Claus, Fables, Comics are not real, hence further disbelief in God.

7 as they say is a magic number, so I will stop at that. Another important thing to note, in any debate involving the existence of god as the topic, one must remember, the onus of providing a proof is on the person claiming existence of God, not the person claiming lack of existence. Just like how I don't have to provide proof in a "is superman real" debate if I was arguing that superman is a fictional character I also don't have to provide proof for my claim that there is no God. My only proof is the lack of any evidence when there should be a lot of evidence if God was indeed real.

Concluding my post with a quote from John McCarthy

"An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can’t be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question."