Actually, you should be apologizing to Blaise Pascal. ;)
I know only one self proclaimed atheist. From what I gather from talking to him is he believes that christians have started all wars. He doesn't want to feel guilt over anything he does no matter how depraved. He is a near radical environmentalist (limousine liberal style). Oddly is a registered republican but has never voted for one and is also married to a born again christian.
I also know a few radical feminist lesbians that attend church regularly. They seem to continue to look for salvation. I guess it's a struggle.
Free will really does make things interesting.
“I think, therefore I am” [cogito ergo sum] --- Descartes
Why "counter" it? It's correct.
“If I believe in God and He does not exist, then I have lost nothing. However, if I do not believe in God and He exists, then I have lost everything…” --- Descartes
It was Pascal, and the problem with it is that it is an equally "good" argument for worshipping Odin, Shiva, Quetzelcotl, and Cthulhu.
The universe had a beginning…i.e., a creation moment [The Big Bang Theory]
Actually, according to Big Bang Theory, the BB wasn't so much a "beginning" as the time when the Universe transformed into the kind of Universe we know, from something else previously (if "previously" is even a valid word in that context, since time as we know it also came about then).
If there was a creation moment, then the existence of Creator is established ipso facto.
See above, that doesn't necessarily follow. But even if it did, the "creator" could have been some natural thing or process or configuration -- there's certainly no logical necessity for it to be some conscious entity, much less a "god" in any sense.
For example individual lightning bolts have distinct beginnings and "creation moments", but their creator, thunderclouds, aren't gods, or even conscious. The Big Bang could have been simiarly "sparked" by some extraordinary (at least by our standards) natural process as well. "Creators" need not be "some guy in the sky with a long white beard", as it were.