1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?
It's just for them who created words "Atheist" and "Non atheist". I never call myself or other people one of those words, every human has different point of view, it's impossible (wrong) to divide 7 billion people as 2 groups.
2. What is Atheism by definition?
Atheism says no to any stronger creature than the human is.
3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?
If there is a lie and the truth in the universe, then the lie goes to the Gods who were created by humanity.
At first they were created to explain all the shits happening on the Earth, Then it became the best control tool, now in modern world religion and the god has became a big big money machine. Atheism frees you up from that shits happening on you and tells you to be whoever you want to be and never trust the things that tells you to become the slave of something! JUST THINK and DO NOT HOPE and you will see the Atheism only direct way to live.
4. What compelled you to become an Atheist? (feel free to skip this if its too personal.)
My brain.
5. Do you know about the Biblical God?
Yeah, the god who was stolen from Jews.
6. What do you know of the Biblical God?
That almighty guy got betrayed by his fucking creatures. So funny.
7. Can you explain evolution to me?
Evolution is not the exact way how humans became creatures as we are now. (in my opinion)
8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?
No.
9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.
10. How did life start?
I have no fucking idea, but not as the "Holy" Bible or "Khuran" say.
11. How do we have DNA?
No idea.
12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much?
Because, religions made people kill each other, rob each other, fight each other, religions created wars and abhorrance, isn't it enough reason to protest?
13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?
Bible is the best proof that there is no Biblical god. Just read it and think.

1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?
I have no belief in god/s.

2. What is Atheism by definition? Find a dictionary.
It means having no belief in god/s.

3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?
If you can't understand this, then there is no hope for you.

4. What compelled you to become an Atheist? (feel free to skip this if its too personal.)
No evidence for god/s. Plenty of evidence for other things having happened in place of the claims of religions.

5. Do you know about the Biblical God?
Yep, was a Presbyterian. And since Christians can't agree on what their god wants, what it is or what to do to be saved, I have to ask you, do you know about the biblical god? Have you read the bible completely?

6. What do you know of the Biblical God?
that it has no more evidence for it than the other gods. I have also read the bible in its entirety, as a believer and as an atheist. I also know that Christians don't agree on the attributes and desires of the god described in the bible.

7. Can you explain evolution to me?
Environmental pressures select for certain features in lifeforms. It isn't abiogenesis.

8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?
I just did. But nice attempt to try to claim that people can't.

9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.
You are very ignorant as a Christian. Have you done any research at all into this or are you just parroting what creationists have told you blindly? There is no "missing link". There are missing evidence in the steps in human evolution, but they all point in the same direction, simple to complex.

10. How did life start?
We don't know yet. Still no reason to believe in your god. Please do some research on your own rather than depending on ignorant creationists who do lie to you. I know that Christians have a hard time believing other Christians lie to them. I did.

11. How do we have DNA?
We don't know yet. Still no reason to believe in your god.

12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much?
Because religion can hurt people by encouraging ignorance, like yours, and encouraging people to harm others, like parents who think this god will cure their children and then children die in agony. It's the same reason I protest against Nazis.

13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?
No evidence magical flood covering all the mountains happened. No evidence that humanity came from two humans, one made from a rib. No evidence that a man can be raised from the dead. No evidence that the Israelites left Egypt and had ten plagues. Christians disagree constantly about what the bible means and if it is literal or not. Christians claim miracles and funny how those never happen, and the supposed healers never find themselves in a pediatric cancer unit or a veterans' hospital to cure real diseases and injuries like amputations.

Alice: I'd like to ask a few general questions about Atheism

Q 1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?
A1. It means I don't believe in a deity or deities.
Q2. What is Atheism by definition?
A2. The absence or lack of belief in a deity or deities.
A3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?
Q3. It's already perfectly simple.
Q4. What compelled you to become an Atheist? (feel free to skip this if its too personal.)
A4. Nothing, I'm an atheist because it's a fact humans create fictional deities, and there is no objective evidence for any of them.
Q5. Do you know about the Biblical God?
A5. I know there's a bible, and it tells fictional stories about a deity.
Q6. What do you know of the Biblical God?
A6. There is no objective evidence for it, like all the rest.
Q7. Can you explain evolution to me?
A7. Species evolution is the changing of all living things over vast timescales this produced the diversity of all life we now see. It's a scientific fact, and the scientific theory of evolution explains it.
Q8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?
A8. Yes, the scientific theory of evolution does this.
Q9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.
A9. This is an old creationist piece of propaganda aimed at convincing gullible people that evolution isn't a scientific fact.
Q10. How did life start?
A10. I don't know, abiogenesis is a field of scientific study that has a long way to go before properly evidenced claims can be made.
Q11. How do we have DNA?
A11. It evolved.
Q12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much?
A12. I can't speak for other atheists, but I have found that much of what religions teach even in the 21st century is intrusive, and often pernicious. Beyond that they make demonstrable false claims and try to retard science and education.
Q13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?
A13. Proof is the wrong word as many of the claims religions make are deliberately structured to be unfalsifiable. Such claims are easy to make but tell us nothing about the validity of a claim. I don't believe the biblical God because like all other deities no one can demonstrate any objective evidence for it, and much of the bible is demonstrably erroneous.

Borrowing Sheldon's nice format, I'll insert my own answers to Alice's questions. (I wonder where she is now?)

Q 1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?
A1. When I say that I am an atheist, I'm saying that for me god-belief has no credibility. It's a case of "No thank-you, I'll pass." ("No sale!" carries no burden of proof. For some definitions of "God" I'd go further and claim that they are false beyond a reasonable doubt. In that case, I do have the burden of proof. However, that doesn't relieve the theist of his own burden of proof.)

Q2. What is Atheism by definition?
A2. There is no answer to that question because there is no such animal as a correct definition. (You can look up the more popular ones in a good dictionary, but that does not settle the issue.) A definition is a declaration by an individual or group as to how they will use a certain word. It's not something that can be true or false. However, if that definition is needlessly confusing, you can call it a bad definition.
.....The absence or lack of belief in a deity or deities, the definition Sheldon uses, is a definition widely used among atheist leaders today. I define an atheist as one who consciously rejects (finds no credibility in) god-belief, which is another popular definition. I like to think of an atheist as one who makes a conscious decision.

Q3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?
A3. Two of the most popular definitions are given above (A2).

Q4. What compelled you to become an Atheist? (feel free to skip this if its too personal.)
A4. As I learned more I found that the evidence didn't add up. Reading the Bible is what put me over the top.

Q5. Do you know about the Biblical God?
A5. I know that the earliest views of God in the Bible are quite similar to those of Baal. They are both storm gods who often rode on clouds, hurled lightening, and had an epic battle with chaos early on (usually in the form of a dragon). For all practical purposes Hebrew culture began as a chip off of the old Canaanite block. (The idea that the Israelites were brutal conquerors from Egypt has been discredited by modern archaeology.)
.....Yahweh and Baal even had similar temples and, no doubt, similar rituals up to a point. But once the Israelites had separated from their Canaanite stock, finding their new identity in the hill country as scholars now know, they adopted customs (such as not eating pork) to distinguish themselves from their Canaanite brethren. The use of customs to separate one's tribe from surrounding peoples is nearly universal. A study of the diverse groups in India made that strikingly clear.
.....In the Old Testament punishment and reward applied to the living, especially to nations or their leaders. Job was not promised a reward in some afterlife! He collected while he was still alive, right down here on terra firma. There was no afterlife! Good and bad alike when down to Sheol after death and took up a kind of shadowy existence if any at all. Compare that to Jesus who served an entirely different god, one who will judge individuals (rather than nations), rewarding some with eternal heaven and others with hell. In the Bible, hell may or may not be eternal depending on which verses you read.
.....Note that some of the Gospels carry "statements" by Jesus that make it clear that he was not God! (God would not pray to himself, for example.) This fits in with the fact that some early sects did not view Jesus as a god. On the other hand, the Gospel of John treats Jesus as a god in his own right. In order not to lose credibility, the New Testament authors had to drag the Old Testament god into the New where he was remade. So, the god of the Bible exhibits considerable evolution and not without contradictory threads. He goes from a rather limited god, similar to Baal, a god that walked in a garden and was afraid that humanity would build a tower to heaven (not that high then!) to a much more sophisticated god in the New Testament. God's evolution didn't stop there. Medieval theologians finally boosted God to the omnipotent, omniscient god of perfect goodness that reigns today in Christian theology.

Q6. What do you know of the Biblical God?
A6. I don't understand this question.

Q7. Can you explain evolution to me?
A7. Yes, in a nutshell. I will have to leave a lot out; whole textbooks are devoted to the subject.

1) There is a vast overproduction of offspring in nature. Many more seedlings are sprouted, many more baby animals born, many more insects hatched than can possibly survive long enough to reproduce. Available space and food resources are soon exhausted as the population rises exponentially.
2) Offspring exhibit considerable variety, most of which is not noticed by the casual observer.
3) Much, if not most of that variety is inherited and passed along.
4) Predators, climate, the type of terrain, the battle for mates, competition for space and food, the ravages of disease and parasites, and a host of other factors ensure, under normal conditions, that the genes of the great majority of offspring do not get passed along. Sometimes survival demands cooperation; at other times brute force wins. Hence, there is a tremendous competition and, statistically speaking, those with the better gene-driven adaptations win in the long run. And, the competition is renewed in every generation and it gets tougher and tougher. Previous winners compete against previous winners.
5) Therefore, the genes that do get passed along belong to those relatively few individuals that survived and reproduced, who were better adapted to the total environment. The total environment thus applies a "selective pressure" to species that favors better and better adaptations. This scenario assumes a stable environment over a reasonable period of time, an environment where opportunities to improve are still abundant.
.....As time marches on, successful populations tend to expand and push their way into new territory with different climates, predators, food sources, etc. They must adapt or die! Also, they tend to lose touch with one another, a reproductive isolation often increased by a new river, desert, mountain range, or a hundred other factors. One species might not last long enough to be affected by a new mountain range, but new mountains do affect generations down the line, therefore affecting the course of evolution.
.....As soon as the gene flow between two populations stop (reproductive isolation) populations begin to go their separate ways evolutionary-wise. Most isolated populations would be small fringe populations subject to different environment pressures (which may include new predators, diseases, foods or different abundances thereof along with different climates and terrain). Small, limited populations are also vulnerable to random twists of fate. Maybe one area is hit by a really bad forest fire, another flooded, and a third overrun by a particularly nasty predator.
.....The evolving, fringe populations continue to adapt to their different environments, and adaptations in a particular direction (a drier climate, for example) may open up opportunities to gain a foothold in a wholly new territory (a desert environment). At some point populations may be different enough to qualify as new species, new genera, new families, etc.
.....Thus, the "evolutionary bush" branches out more and more, even as many branches get pruned by extinction. Notice that in this "evolutionary bush" any two species always have a common ancestor. You just trace the two branches downward until they join up. Evolving life stamps that pattern into all kinds of places, in the fossil record, in DNA, in various molecules that can trap such information--such as cytochrome c, and even into the anatomical features of living animals! Therein lies the greatest proof of evolution! Anti-evolutionists, however, don't seem to have the foggiest clue as the overwhelming significance of this pattern, one found in so many dissimilar places. Evolution is the only mechanism known that can cause that pattern (each bush pattern carrying a similar arrangement of plants and animals) to appear in totally unrelated places.

Q8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?
A8. Yes, as per A7. Do keep in mind that a whole textbook of details has been left out, some being rather important, and that I am not immune to error. But I think I have given a reasonable overview (in a nutshell) of the main process.

Q9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.
A9. This "missing link" is part of a creationist fantasy! While it is true that there are many details about the history of human evolution that we don't know, meaning that we can't yet be confident about our evolutionary pathway among the hominids, where new discoveries and surprises surely await, we do have enough pieces to trace the big picture. Our evolutionary path passes through one of the ape branches in the evolutionary bush. (I use "evolutionary bush" whereas others speak of the "evolutionary tree"). If you see smoke, you know there is a fire in there, somewhere, even if you can't trace all its parts.

Q10. How did life start?
A10. I don't know, and neither do you. Abiogenesis is the science that deals with the origin of life, and those scientists are working very hard to find the answers. I wouldn't sell them short given the progress that has already been made in a very difficult field. Whether the actual history of life on Earth can be recovered is not yet known, but I am confident that in the fullness of time scientists will discover one or more plausible pathways. Plausible stepping stones are continually being discovered.

Q11. How do we have DNA?
A11. There is evidence within DNA that suggests that it is an evolved product, possibly coming out of an "RNA world."

Q12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much?
A12. When religious bigotry assumes the drivers seat, atheists (and others) tend to be murdered. Read your history! Religious bigotry, even in the recent history of industrial nations, has denied atheists jobs, the right to vote, the right to sit on a jury, and even the right to speak out. Religious bigotry and its lies have turned atheists into social outcasts.
.....The best way to deal with religious fanaticism is to punch holes in its aura of certainty, to challenge it publicly--hopefully before they are strong enough to kill us! You won't convince the fanatics. But with all that hot air leaking out, it will be harder for them to round up the usual lynch mob.
.....On a different note, many of us atheists have a deep respect for the truth. We are revolted by the protected status that religious lies have enjoyed down through the centuries, especially when those lies impact us. Religious lies poison the minds of our children, including those attending public schools where the teaching of science and health are degraded.
.....Thus, the need to protest.

Q13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?
A13. The biblical god is hung by his own Bible which, in no way, shape, or form resembles the organization and thinking of an advanced being! An advanced work, let along a divine work, would scarcely require thick tomes by apologists to justify obvious howlers. The very existence of those apologetic works is proof that the Bible is not what it should be! That Bible believers can believe in the extreme silliness of Noah's flood, Adam & Eve, or a talking snake is shocking! Then we have Jonah's weird adventures involving the instant, magic stilling of a ferocious storm at sea, a free ride in a "whale," and his miraculous conversion of everyone in Nineveh (the capital of the mighty Assyrian empire, Israel's most ferocious enemy). That believers might also judge the Bible to be of divine quality is hardly surprising in that light!
.....On a more fundamental level, an atheist has no burden to prove that there is no biblical God anymore than he has a burden to prove that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist! Or, that Bertrand Russell's tea cup isn't orbiting the sun somewhere beyond Jupiter. The naïve idea that the biblical God is somehow justified if no disproof is offered has a name. It's called Argumentum ad Ignorantiam or "Argument from Ignorance": The fallacy of advancing a claim on the basis that no one has proven it false.
.....What, then, is the point of your question? If you just want to see a proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) then take my proof above.

1. Actually the word Atheist should not exist. A used before a word (in this case the word theist) simply means without, from the Greek. Theism of course meaning believe in the supernatural. I don't need to define myself as a Ahobbitist or a Aunicornist .
2. By definition Atheism is a lack of belief in something for which there is no evidence.
3. I think that most people would understand the explanations given in 1 & 2 above.
4. Like every human being I was born an atheist. I have yet to come across any argument or explanation that has convinced me to move from the default position.
5. Yes and I am also aware of the thousand of other Gods and Goddesses that man kind has worshiped. You may wish to reflect at this point that you to are an atheist with regards to thousands of Gods, I just go one God further.
6. That he was made in man's image, nasty, spiteful and vengeful. Just as you would expect from the imagination of bronze age peasants.
7. Evolution is a complex phenomena. Basically you have a self replicating substance such as RNA, however as it does not replicate faithfully and mutations occur. Some mutations are beneficial to its chances of survival. As such they are more likely to reproduce and pass the beneficial traits on the their off spring. Read "The Greatest Show on Earth" Richard Dawkins and / or "Why Evolution is True by" Jerry Coyne for a full and detailed explanation.
8. Read the books mentioned above.
9. There is no missing link, go to a natural history museum and check it out. The phrase "missing link" is an anachronism from Darwin's time, before we had the amount of evidence now available.
10. We are working on it. However if you are asking that question from a religious point of view , it begs the same question where did God come from?
11. We have DNA because that is the building block of life.
12. We don't protest against God (silly), we protest against the terrible things done in his name. War, sexual abuse of children, burning and torturing human beings to death the Inquisition etc etc etc.
13. It is philosophically impossible to prove a negative and the burden is always on those who make the claim to prove it. Replace the term Biblical God with fairy, dragon, flying spaghetti monster etc and you'll see the point. Christopher Hitchens put it best. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Hi Alice: Looks like I am late to the party. I like answering questions for people with genuine curiosity. Let's look at the ones you have asked.

1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?
First of all let's set the record straight. "Atheist" was not our first choice. "Atheist" is a religious word used against people who do not go along with the religion in question. You can equate Atheist to "Non-believer, heathen, heretic, apostate, or any other derogatory term used by RELIGION to demean anyone who does not agree with them. The word itself is a bit like the word "Yankee." Yankee was a derogatory word leveled at Americans by the British but we adopted it, named a baseball team after it and even teach Yankee Doodle to our children as one of the nation's theme songs. We have done exactly the same thing to the word "Atheist." We have taken the power of the word from Theists and claimed that power as our own. We are atheists and proud. We are non-believers, heathen, heretics, apostates, and more. We do not believe in their Gods. It's just that simple.

2. What is Atheism by definition?
"Non-belief in god or gods."

3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?
"Non-belief in Gods"

4. What compelled you to become an Atheist? (feel free to skip this if its too personal.)
RELIGION MADE ME AN ATHEIST. I chose not to believe in religion and so they called me an apostate, a heretic, a blasphemer, a sinner, a non-believer, and an atheist. I am an atheist because that is what theists call people who do not believe in their gods.

5. Do you know about the Biblical God?
Yes. I have read the entire bible and was a born again Christian for years.

6. What do you know of the Biblical God?
The Biblical god is a complete asshole who kills people for no good reason at all. He is a butcher of innocent men, women, children and even livestock. He is the grand fuck-up of all time. He creates a world and then destroys it because he can not do anything right the first time. The asshole even kills his own son. (Who is really him discussed as his son so that he sacrifices himself to himself to change rules that he made all by himself.)
7. Can you explain evolution to me?
No - I am an atheist not a biologist.

8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?
No - evolution has nothing at all to do with atheism.

9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.
What don't you understand. I am an atheist and not a biologist.

10. How did life start?
I am an atheist and not a cosmologist.

11. How do we have DNA?
We are born with it as far as I know.

12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much? "What does religion have to do with a biblical god?" Why is asking for evidence protesting? Why do you subject others to your stilted sense of morality without proving that your morality system is true? If you think there is a biblical god, prove it. As for religion, it is the oldest con game on the planet. Give me money and I will promise you something after you die. BULLSHIT.

13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?
I have the exact same amount of proof that you have for the existence of a biblical god. Given that there is no evidence what so ever for either position, why should anyone believe?

Hi,

I don't know if you're still checking responses here, but I do hope by now you have come to understand the problems in some of your questions.

Here's all you and your religion teacher need to understand. People don't decide to be atheists. They acknowledge that they are atheist. Atheism means you don't believe any of the descriptions of God you are familiar with or that you can imagine are believable. For example, in my case, I was raised in America in a Catholic home. I took religious classes from first grade to 8th. I was baptised. I talked with my friends about God, and most of them were from other faiths. None of it ever felt like it answered anything.

Now, as it happens, I do have a basic understanding of evolution and big bang cosmology, but I realized I was an atheist before I knew what dna was or how it worked. Now that I do know what science says about how the universe and solar system formed, and how life began and how it evolved, and how society developed, I still don't see the need for a God. A person doesn't have to understand biology or geology or astronomy in order to be an atheist.

Now, if you want to believe in God or if you can't help but to believe it, that's fine with me. Some people believe, others don't. No big deal. However, when people vote based on dogma, or when legislators pass laws based on religious edicts, that's when we have a problem. As an atheist I don't want religion taught in schools. I don't want religion deciding who can marry whom, or what I can eat on Friday or drink on Sunday. That's not because I'm focused on religion. That's because religion has chosen to focus on controlling me, unbidden and unwelcome.

Now, can I prove that there is no God? Yes. Well, I can prove that any specific God you choose to represent as true is - in fact - false. I cannot, however, offer a be-all inclusive proof that no God exists. But since I'm not the one making an assertion, I'm not the one with the burden of proof. Yet, if somebody wants to tell me what they think God is, I'll almost certainly be able to tell them why I don't believe in that God. In fact, I'll probably be able to offer a proof that He doesn't exist at all.

So let's assume that we're talking about the biblical God. Here's why I don't believe in that one. First, his origin story makes no sense. He existed in a void and he spoke the universe into existence? Huh? Why? Why then? How did he get there? Is he still there .. in the void, or is he here with us now? Why did he create billions of galaxies with billions of stars each with billions of planets if he was only concerned with one planet? Why did he create said universe with evidence that it actually came into existence 13.7 billion years prior? Why did he create an evil fallen angel? Why punish people for seeking knowledge? Etc.

So that's why I don't believe it, but it's not proof that the God described doesn't exist. For that we look to the source material. The stories that make up the book of Genesis were cobbled together from numerous sources. There is evidence that the Hebrews borrowed the story from the Sumerians and Egyptians and other civilizations. Early Hebrews were actually tribes each with their own version of the story, and the various versions were edited together and "perfected" over several generations, until there was one narrative and nobody left alive who remembered when there were several different narratives. Politically, it made sense for everyone to follow the same religion and the same story. And the story was designed to favor the central group.

In fact, the same thing happened under Constantine a few hundred years later when the story was coopted by Rome and the Jesus narrative was trimmed and culled to the version we know now. Look up the Council of Nicaea.

The God of the bible doesn't exist because he was created in committee for political reasons as a story to control the masses.

1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?
I mean that I am not a theist, in that I do not accept the claim that gods exist.

2. What is Atheism by definition?
A person who does accept the claims of religion about gods existing.

3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?
Atheism means that accept of the claims of religion is not support by evidence. Theism means the opposite, that gods actually exist.

5. Do you know about the Biblical God?
Everything the bible talks about it.

6. What do you know of the Biblical God?
Everything that the bible talks about it.

7. Can you explain evolution to me?
Yes, but will you understand the topic. It is a vast subject and requires an open mind.

8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?
Yes, see #7.

9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.
You have no idea what is meant by a missing link, because you use it here as an attempt to trap.

10. How did life start?
Simply, so that you can understand, lighting striking a puddle.

11. How do we have DNA?
Chemical processes chanced on the development of it.

12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much?
For the same reason Doctors protest disease.

13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?
I look around my room and find no god, therefore there is no god. If you have a problem with this, point out where I should go to find a god. Otherwise I am fine with not having a god.

Atheism is simply to not believe in a deity. Like religion, there are divisions with differing beliefs. For example, satanists have a certain moral code.
I, personally, am an atheist because religion is so rickety and uncertain that I can't believe it. Of all history, your god only surfaced to be worshipped at a certain point. What about all the good people through history who were never introduced to your god? Are they punished like those who know and choose other beliefs? How did you just happen to live in the time of your 'correct' religion being in place?
I do know about the biblical God, since I was raised in a Protestant school and have Catholic relatives. Their questionable actions mean that, even if I were religious, I wouldn't worship Them.
Evolution is the change and adaption of an organism when they are born with a variation. For example, during the industrial revolution, trees in London were charred black and white butterflies (or may be moths, my memory fails me) who landed on them were eaten. Black butterflies, evolved from the white, were camouflaged and survived.
The missing link is a blindspot in science. Due to the similar DNA between modern organisms and fossils found, we have a rough idea of where humans came from. The missing link is a stage that scientists haven't yet filled in.
DNA defines what we are. The average person has 46 chromosones, which are a kind of recipe for our body. When you cut yourself, your chromosones are what ensure that your skin grows back in the same colour.
Some, not all, atheists oppose religion because people attempt to force them into belief or restrict everyone from their ideas. For example, many Christians oppose gay marriage because their religion (supposedly, but that's an entire other point) labels it as a sin.
We have no proof for God but we do for the big bang. The red wave, for example, is a result of it and is the continuous expansion of the universe.

I know that you didn't ask this, but I think that - even if there is a God and those who don't believe are punished - atheism is worth it. The world is infinite and we'll never know what it truly holds. To atheists, we aren't puppets in God's plan, we are tiny blips in an extraordinarily unfathomable world who are made of what has always been/will always be. The existance of God makes us a project or creation, but nature building itself is much more beautiful.

Hmm, why do I harbour the suspicion that this is a copy-paste set of questions from a creationist website, that's been doing the rounds of various rationalist forums? Only this little list has that aura I've experienced from other creationist "gotcha" lists that have been doing the rounds.

However, in the interests of fulfilling one's proper discoursive duty, I hereby launch into addressing this. Starting with:

1. What exactly do you mean by "I am an Atheist"?

2. What is Atheism by definition?

These two are, essentially, the same question, so I shall cover them both with a single answer. Namely, that atheism, in its rigorous formulation, consists of a suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions. That is IT. In short, atheism can be summarised as "YOU assert that your magic man exists, YOU support your assertions". All I have to do, as someone who continues to maintain said suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions, is wait for a supernaturalist to fail or succeed in the endeavour of providing proper support for said assertions.

In the interests of rigour, let's kill off at source, several supernaturalist misrepresentations of atheism, by taking note of the following elementary concepts. First of these being, that not accepting your assertion, does NOT mean accepting the contrary assertion. If you assert "Proposition X is true", my being suspicious of your assertion does NOT mean that I assert "Proposition X is false". Because I can be suspicious of this other assertion as well. I can regard both assertions as bereft of support.

At this point, we come directly to the reasons I have not mentioned "belief" until now. First, the baggage of ambiguity surrounding this word, even in arenas of honest discourse, render the word all but useless as the basis of any properly constructed, robust definitions. Second, given the observable evidence informing those who pay attention thereto, that 'belief' as practised by supernaturalists, consists of nothing more than uncritical acceptance of unsupported mythological assertions, the definition I have given above not only avoids the baggage of ambiguity, but also allows me to state neatly that, as a corollary of all the aforementioned, atheism in is rigorous formulation constitutes the very antithesis of 'belief'. This at a stroke destroys several duplicitous apologetic assertions routinely peddled by the usual suspects.

Indeed, I, as an atheist, regard belief itself as useless, if one's aim is to obtain substantive knowledge, courtesy of the above cited observational evidence pointing to the nature of supernaturalist 'belief'. As far as I am concerned, assertions remain assertions, possessing the status "truth value unknown", and are discardable as such, until such time as the requisite epistemological deficit is remedied by test of those assertions, and their conversion via such tests into postulates of known truth value.

I therefore declare, courtesy of the above, that I am an atheist, in no small part because I harbour a proper understanding of, and respect for, proper rules of discourse.

3. Can you simplify the definition of Atheism so anyone would understand?

How much simpler do you want, than the definition I already gave above? Namely, suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions?

4. What compelled you to become an Atheist? (feel free to skip this if its too personal.)

One, proper understanding of, and respect for, the proper rules of discourse, and their application to supernaturalist assertions. Two, the complete failure of supernaturalists to date, to support any of their assertions via proper means. Indeed, one of the concepts I recognise as applicable here, is that any substantive answer to the question of whether or not a god-type entity of any sort exists, will require truly monumental amounts of diligent labour, and will result in whoever succeeds in this endeavour being awarded a Nobel Prize, regardless of the outcome of that endeavour. I am on public record as having stated this, or issued equivalent statements, in other online venues. I am also on public record as having stated, in those same venues, that the moment genuine evidence for a god-type entity materialises, that evidence will point to an entity so radically different from all previous human experience, that not only will said entity falsify all of our mythologies at a stroke, but the people best placed to understand that entity will be particle physicists, because they deal with counter-intuitive phenomena on a routine basis in their daily work. Of course, we have to find that entity first, in a manner that is unambiguous and reliably repeatable, but I am confident that the moment this happens, not only will it be headline news globally for weeks or even months, but that said entity will bear NO resemblance to any of the candidates presented in mythologies.

Indeed, that is a defining feature of my particular approach to atheism. I regard mythologies as incompetent, with respect to the matter of providing substantive knowledge about the universe and its contents, or for that matter, anything that may lie "outside", however this may be defined.

5. Do you know about the Biblical God?

6. What do you know of the Biblical God?

Ah, how supernaturalists love to repeat themselves. I am aware of the assertions presented in the requisite mythology about this entity, and furthermore aware that those assertions are logically incompatible with each other. As a corollary, this entity can be dismissed with the same ease, as the authors of the requisite mythology fabricated those assertions. A task which was obviously performed with very little actual thought. Indeed, this is frequently a problem encountered when dealing with mythologies - the authors thereof have a habit of being disparate, failing to communicate with each other in a meaningful manner even when not prevented from doing so by time and space constraints, and failing to apply even elementary analysis to their output prior to dissemination. As a corollary, it is not merely your choice of mythological magic entity that I dismiss, though once again, I see the entirely typical supernaturalist insistence upon their choice being presented for consideration, as if the choices of other, rival supernaturalists did not exist.

And it seems. we're back to repetition again ...

7. Can you explain evolution to me?
8. Can you LOGICALLY explain evolution to me?

Excuse me, but there would be no point in anyone possessing actual knowledge of the subject presenting an illogical explanation, would there? I really do wish supernaturalists would exercise some bloody thought before posting such drivel.

First of all, let's deal with the elementary concepts. Foremost being that evolution is an observed fact. Populations of living organisms observably and measurably change over time, with the changes being detectably heritable and associated with well-defined genes. The scientific literature documents numerous examples of these, and if you have time, I can search through my collection of papers (3,828 and climbing as I type this), and find some if you wish.

That brings me neatly to the next elementary concept, namely that evolution is a population phenomenon. What changes over time is not particular individuals - these usually have their genetic complement determined at fertilisation, and said complement does not undergo wholesale change, even though during cell division, cells within that individual's body can acquire changes via mutations. Those changes only affect the genetic constitution of those particular cells, not that of the whole individual. (Of course, single celled organisms are subject to different rules, but covering those adequately would take a 500 page book, and I'm not about to write one in the confines of this post).

However, even though individuals within a particular generation are largely static, the population is NOT. When it's time for those individuals to reproduce, that's when the population changes. Because those offspring will be genetically distinct from the rest of the population. They will even be distinct, in an important sense, from their parents. Whilst they inherit from their parents, they do so via mechanisms that reorganise the genes involved in that inheritance (see: meiosis, for one of those mechanisms). Consequently with each new generation, the genetic constitution of the population changes. Sometimes, that change can involve the appearance of novel features in one or more individuals, followed by the disappearance or preservation of those features, according to whether the inheritors thereof disseminate those features to their own offspring or not. At bottom, it's all about inheritance, a concept that you should already be familiar with. Of course, we then come to the matter of whether or not various measurable forces shape that population's inheritance, and that's where selection processes play their part.

Again, I can refer to that nice collection of scientific papers on my laptop's hard drive, if you need particular examples illustrating the relevant phenomena in action.

9. Tell me about the missing link in human evolution.

There isn't one. This is an artefact, arising from several sources. First of these sources being, the manner in which taxonomy, namely the discipline that confers scientific names upon organisms, has historically relied upon type specimens, which are, in effect, specimens chosen to be exemplars of the species being described and named. The problem with this approach being that those type specimens are necessarily static entities (especially once they're dead and in a jar of preservative!) whilst the populations that supplied those type specimens are dynamic. As a corollary, those original type specimens become, over time, less and less representative of the true nature of the population, in the case of a population of living organisms, and biologists have for some time been exercised in deep thought determining how to prevent that shift from impacting negatively upon their analyses of those living populations. Some interesting consequences arise from that shift, but I'll save those for another time.

Matters are even worse when one is dealing with fossil taxa. Typically, the ability to sample fossils is much less than the ability to sample living populations. One can, in the case of living populations, perform a regular genetic examination to determine how that population has changed since the type specimens were selected , and factor that into one's analysis. This is, of course, impossible with fossils, though this does not in any way diminish their utility value. Indeed, a part of that utility value, stems from the recognition that those fossils are particular snapshots in time, and as a corollary, it is expected in advance that the ancestors and descendants of the fossil in question, exhibited at least a certain minimum level of variation, and that said variation increased with generational difference from the fossil. That's a concept that's sadly not mentioned often enough, namely, that you are a transitional form between your parents and your offspring. You are identical to none of them, but constitute an inheritance bridge between them.

Apart from the tendency of taxonomy to reinforce, at least in the past, a mistaken view of populations of organisms as static instead of dynamic, and an equally mistaken view among lay observers, that the taxonomic decisions about species identity purportedly constitute "decrees set in stone", when they are anything but (I could probably write an entire chapter on the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive ideas, which would be apposite here), there's also the mistaken view that the transition from one species identity to another is some sort of instantaneous event, akin to the throwing of a switch. It isn't. Speciation is a process that is known to take time, and requires certain well-defined conditions to be satisfied before the transition is complete, and until then, although it is a matter of convention to maintain the current defined identity for the population until those conditions are fulfilled, that convention is nothing more than that. Quite simply, we need some sort of label to attach to the population, in order to be able to discuss it succinctly, and if an existing label has been chosen, there's no point in reaching for a new one until the data tells us this is needed.

Trouble being, that this combination of conventions in disciplines, has led to the naive "linear sequence of 'begats' " view of organismal evolution over time, becoming the prevailing view in the past, whilst the actual process was far more akin to a branching tree, with various branches extending so far before the lineages in question became extinct, and others producing descendants that eventually led to the organisms we see today. We humans are no different in that regard.

In short, what we have, is a collection of well-defined species, that is a series of time snapshots of the state of the populations extant at that time. The understanding of scientists for some time now, has been that those snapshots are precisely that - snapshots of particular occurrences of organisms in time and space, that happen to be useful in mapping our past. It's wonderful to behold, what can be learned from incomplete data, when you have the proper tools for analysis thereof.

Moving on ...

10. How did life start?

This is an area of active research. I have 321 papers in my collection covering that research, and that is a vastly incomplete sample of the available scientific literature. But, suffice it to say, that the prevailing view is that the origin of life is grounded in chemistry. There's a good reason for scientists considering this to be the case, which centres upon the fact that you, like every other living organism on the planet, are an instance of chemistry writ large. Millions of chemical reactions are taking place in your body right now, and if some of those reactions stop, then you die. Given that scientists have a lot of data to work with in this vein, it is therefore eminently sensible to ask whether or not simpler antecedent chemical reactions could have started the whole ball rolling. Research aimed at answering this has taught us much, such as the fact that molecules associated with living organisms and their life processes have been detected in places that the ordinary man in the street would never have considered, such as interstellar gas clouds several thousand light years from Earth. It's wonderful what spectroscopy reveals when you apply it to light from astronomical sources. Other outcomes from the research include the ease with which it is possible to synthesise RNA strands once you have some clay minerals to act as catalysts, not to mention a whole host of synthesis routes for precursor compounds that have been validated in laboratory experiments. And I hasten to add that a huge amount of experimental work has been performed in this field, including recent work covering the formation of model protocells in the laboratory, in order to ascertain the likely behaviour of the actual protocells that preceded life on Earth as we know it.

Again, if you want a comprehensive exposition, it'll take me weeks even to summarise the literature, let alone present it in full. If I were to write a textbook containing the state of the art of knowledge in the field, it would easily run to about 4,000 pages. This should give you an idea how much we've learned from the requisite research.

11. How do we have DNA?

From the above, chemistry. You do realise that DNA is simply another organic molecule?

12. If what you believe is true, that there is no Biblical God or god of any kind, then why do Atheists protest against religion so much?

BZZZT! And here we have several canards in one single sentence.

As I stated earlier, I don't bother with "belief". What I bother with is evidentially supported postulates. When one has evidence that a postulate is correct, then belief is superfluous to requirements and irrelevant. That's canard number one dealt with.

Second, I have never asserted that no god-type entity exists, as you would know from my answer to [4] above. What I do consider to be a confidently supportable postulate on several grounds, is that mythologically asserted entities do not exist. That's canards number two dealt with,

Third, what I and many others here are concerned about, is the manner in which adherence to mythology based doctrines is used by those adherents, as purported "justification" for influencing policy decisions, frequently with observably malign results. frankly, I don't care what weird fantasies you choose to indulge in, when those fantasies are kept private, but the moment you start demanding in a public arena, that I treat your fantasies as fact, and hand you all manner of unwarranted discoursive and policy privileges to this effect, then that's when I call a halt. In exactly the same manner as you would call a halt, if you were faced with, say, Muslims demanding that you conform to Sharia law.

13. What proof do you have that there is no Biblical God?

And at this point, let's deal with another canard. Proof is reserved for pure mathematics, courtesy of the fact that said discipline operates via the establishment of consistent axioms, from which other theorems are derived, and within which, it is possible in principle to derive complete knowledge of the entities and interactions of interest. Furthermore, since pure mathematics is an abstract discipline, it has nothing to say about concrete entities.

In the world of concrete entities, we turn to the empirical sciences, within which the key concept is evidential support for postulates. Namely, is the postulate in question consistent with the data?

First of all, no entity can exist concretely, that possesses logically contradictory properties. On that basis alone, numerous mythological candidates, your choice included, are discarded.

Second, none of the assertions contained in your choice of mythology, with respect to this entity, have been independently corroborated. That provides an additional reason to discard this entity.

Third, numerous assertions about the universe and its contents, contained within your choice of mythology, are demonstrably wrong. Which renders your choice of mythology unreliable as a source of data.

Of course, your mythology isn't the only one failing on these grounds, but because your mythology does fail on these grounds, the requisite conclusion inexorably follows.

I think that is sufficient for now.