paula kirby's rejection of religion may be recent, but she must have had a lifetime of eloquence. at the hibernia times:
snip
atheists recognise that we need evidence in order to come to reliable conclusions about reality and that, so far, those who claim there is a god have signally failed to provide it. and atheists care about reality: not what it might be comforting to believe, or what has traditionally been believed, or what we have been instructed to believe. and this focus on reality, far from diminishing our experience of life, as so many religious people imagine, actually makes our lives all the richer: once you have faced up to the reality that there is no evidence to suggest there is another life after this one, it becomes all the more important to live this finite life to the full, learning and growing, and caring for others, because this is their only life, too, and there is no reason to believe there will be heavenly compensation for their earthly sufferings.
/snip
read the entire piece here.
