AMERICAN ATHEISTS: Mr. Adams, you have been described as a radical Atheist. Is this accurate?
DNA: Yes. I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as Atheist, some people will say, Dont you mean Agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god - in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. Its easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that its an opinion I hold seriously. Its funny how many people are genuinely surprised to hear a view expressed so strongly. In England we seem to have drifted from vague wishy-washy Anglicanism to vague wishy-washy Agnosticism - both of which I think betoken a desire not to have to think about things too much.
AMERICAN ATHEISTS: How long have you been a nonbeliever, and what brought you to that realization? DNA: Well, its a rather corny story. As a teenager I was a committed Christian. It was in my background. I used to work for the school chapel in fact. Then one day when I was about eighteen I was walking down the street when I heard a street evangelist and, dutifully, stopped to listen. As I listened it began to be borne in on me that he was talking complete nonsense, and that I had better have a bit of a think about it.
Ive put that a bit glibly. When I say I realized he was talking nonsense, what I mean is this. In the years Id spent learning History, Physics, Latin, Math, Id learnt (the hard way) something about standards of argument, standards of proof, standards of logic, etc. In fact we had just been learning how to spot the different types of logical fallacy, and it suddenly became apparent to me that these standards simply didnt seem to apply in religious matters. In religious education we were asked to listen respectfully to arguments which, if they had been put forward in support of a view of, say, why the Corn Laws came to be abolished when they were, would have been laughed at as silly and childish and - in terms of logic and proof -just plain wrong. Why was this?
Read the rest here.
http://www.americanatheist.org/win98-99/T2/silverman.html