It depends on the attributes of a divine being. If the divine being is unlimited in attributes: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, etc, then I disbelieve such a being or beings exist because of evil and suffering. To have the power to prevent such suffering, to have the knowledge to prevent it, and supposed to be compassionate enough not to want people to suffer is sufficient reasons for preventing evil and the resulting suffering. The fat that evil and suffering exists indicates that no such being exist because such a being would be guilty of severe negligence. As for the limited beings-none have given me compelling reason to believe that any of them exist. So I lack a belief based on a lack of evidence.

1. Look through a telescope and contemplate the billions of stars and millions of galaxies (thank you, Carl Sagan). What consciousness could encompass all that?
2. There is absolutely no empirical evidence.
3. Our capacity to enter altered states of consciousness has given rise to various explanations for our experiences while in that state. The process and phenomena experienced when entering altered states is fairly consistent for any practitioner. This gave rise to shamanic beliefs and practices (proto-religion) that in turn gave rise to religion. Simply put - a person's visions or spiritual enlightenment or sense of God is nothing more than them running around neural networks in their brain they don't normally have access to in an awake state of consciousness.

It all comes down to what you think a god is and one of the more basic attributes would be supernatural otherwise you are just a cargo cultist making a god out of ordinary members of a more advanced civilization.
Now while I don't pretend the human race knows everything there is to know or even that we are the most advanced civilization in the universe, statistically unlikely, I am sure everything out there is natural whether we understand it or not. Given that you end up with no choice but to be an atheist.

It'd be more accurate to say "I find it overwhelmingly improbable that there is a deity." Why? Several reasons, including:

1. The Problem of Evil.
2. The preposterous claims of holy books and those who purport to represent the deity.
3. The remarkable adequacy of thousands of years of accumulated science to explain formerly "unexplainable" phenomena.
4. The multiplicity of conflicting, mutually exclusive claims about what that deity or deities actually is and what it/they want from us.
5. The logical impossibility of an entity existing outside of universal space-time.
6. Personal experience with religious teachings and practices failing to produce any emotional or experiential response even remotely similar to what faithful people claim has happened to them.

To me, it's not logical that something existed before the big bang which was the beginning of time.

Whether or not he is real, he has no impact on my life. I see him as irrelevant, and irrelevant things are not to be considered, and are therefore excluded from my perception of reality.

Revise the question. I don't believe that no deity exists. The word belief just simply doesn't fit with no deity existing.

Knowing something of the History of stories that existed prior to the Bible that were then included with names changed but the story intact is one. Another thing is the ridiculous premise of so many things in the bible and other religius texts that one knows that in no way are certain things even plausible and then there is the evidence in both religious texts and archaelogical that point to possible alien intervention which seems far more logical to me than some omnipotent god.

All the evidence around me. I have never seen, heard or touched anything that makes me think there is a higher power or divine being. All of my experience tells me there is not.

A lot of it for me was the fallibility of an "infallible" god, and the inability of its followers to answer basic questions about his 'Grand Design'

As an atheist I don't "believe" anything. I see atheism and agnosticism as being on two separate spectra. Agnosticism vs Gnosticism has to do with whether you think the the existence or nonexistence of God is knowable. Atheism vs Theism has to do with whether or not you have belief in the existence of any god or gods. Atheism and Agnosticism aren't mutually exclusive. I'm both.

If you don't live your life under the belief that there is a personal and interacting god, you are an atheist. Lacking theist belief is all it means.

When it comes to the God of the Christian Bible, I am utterly certain that he does not exist. On that score, I am a gnostic atheist. Is there some creator god that put it all in motion and walked a way? I have no reason to suspect such, so I don't actively believe it. But I couldn't disprove it. For that definition of god I'm an agnostic atheist.

And when I say the Judeo-Christian God cannot exist, it is very simple. The revelation is utterly bogus. The key story is Moses. He receives the original revelation including the Law and brings the Jewish people to Land. Only none of that happened. There was no Exodus. There was no wandering in the desert for 40 years. No conquering of Canaan either. It's not just that we lack evidence for those stories, we have well documented "other" histories that know really did happen.

These are matters of mundane history. They are utterly excluded from possibility. They have been for decades now.

I cannot be expected to believe a genuine revelation was received during a period of fictional history. Whoever Jesus was, if he existed at, he certainly wasn't the Son of God. And his words, regardless of actual origin, betray no awareness that Moses and Exodus were fiction. Further, no name appears more frequently in the Koran that Musa (Moses).

It isn't just a ridiculous Genesis. The whole founding story is a farce.

I don't "believe no deity exists". I am an atheist because I lack belief in a higher power or powers. I also live my life by Carl Sagan's "I don't want to believe. I want to know." Which, yes, also makes me an agnostic. I have seen no convincing evidence that a deity exists, and therefore do not know whether or not one or more does.

But I still do not believe in deities.

Atheism is not a positive belief that no higher powers exist. It is the lack of belief in a higher power or powers.

Physics, math, and common sense do the job for me. If we were created in his image what happened to Mrs. god? It is all a fable that the some among the people took advantage of to exploit the rest of the population and gee did it ever work!

It's very simple, no deity has ever been shown to exist, so to start with, which one would I possibly believe in? (I enjoy "believing" in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but that's different)

Why not be agnostic then? Because any god like being that I think could possibly exist does not influence my life and world in any measurable way so why bother? You may as well ask the sun to adjust it's energy output to suit you as to pray for intervention. If there's anything out/up there, if it's worth being worshiped then it'll certainly forgive me my reluctance to worship it. If it hides itself from me then it probably doesn't wish to be found.

There either is or is not a god. If you believe there is you believe that you will be granted eternal life (assuming you pick the right church and good luck on that lottery). If you believe that there isnt. Then you can just get on with your life. If you refuse to make that call you have lost. Let me put it this way. About 22 years ago I visited Jerusalem. A odd place for an atheist but I was there. Now for the most part it was peaceful (then) probably due to massive amounts of security. However all the different religions kept to themselves. Coptic, Catholic, Orthodox Greek, Russian. Muslim Shea, Sunni. All seemed to say the same thing "you are one of us or your not". Right in the middle was the dome of the rock where Muslims believe Abraham was going to sacrifice Issac. That was the tone of the place. From what I hear you are nobody in Chicago till youve had someone rubbed out. Well your nobody in Jerusalem till youve put a kid on an altar. God botherers talk of love but give us death. Hypothetically if god existed, then all those people that prayed to him might get an answer saying "don't kill or hurt people". I am not asking for a miracle, no parting of seas or burning bushes just "play nice"......silence, nothing, zilch. So even if and that`s a f*ckin big IF he does exist? what bloody use is he?
Worse than than that ask yourself this. Would those guys have flew into the twin towers on 9/11 if the concept of an afterlife did not exist.
I leave with one lasting memory of that trip. As we drove towards Caesarea, a road sign read "Armageddon welcomes careful drivers"

"I think atheism is based more on belief rather then empirical evidence and science"
That's what the word atheist means:
A - without
Theist - believe in one or more gods
so yeah, it's based on belief, or more accurately, the lack of one specific belief.
the default and rational position on any topic is to be unconvinced of a contention without sufficient evidence.
I do not contend that there are no deities, I am merely unconvinced by anyone's contention that deities do exist.

There either is or is not a god. If you believe there is you believe that you will be granted eternal life (assuming you pick the right church and good luck on that lottery). If you believe that there isnt. Then you can just get on with your life. If you refuse to make that call you have lost. Let me put it this way. About 22 years ago I visited Jerusalem. A odd place for an atheist but I was there. Now for the most part it was peaceful (then) probably due to massive amounts of security. However all the different religions kept to themselves. Coptic, Catholic, Orthodox Greek, Russian. Muslim Shea, Sunni. All seemed to say the same thing "you are one of us or your not". Right in the middle was the dome of the rock where Muslims believe Abraham was going to sacrifice Issac. That was the tone of the place. From what I hear you are nobody in Chicago till youve had someone rubbed out. Well your nobody in Jerusalem till youve put a kid on an altar. God botherers talk of love but give us death. Hypothetically if god existed, then all those people that prayed to him might get an answer saying "don't kill or hurt people". I am not asking for a miracle, no parting of seas or burning bushes just "play nice"......silence, nothing, zilch. So even if and that`s a f*ckin big IF he does exist? what bloody use is he?
Worse than than that ask yourself this. Would those guys have flew into the twin towers on 9/11 if the concept of an afterlife did not exist.
I leave with one lasting memory of that trip. As we drove towards Caesarea, a road sign read "Armageddon welcomes careful drivers"

I tend to lookout this issue from the other way round: what proper evidence do believers have that a deity exists? Not their scriptures, which were all started back in the Stone Age. Not their "faith", which is blind (deaf and uncritical). Not their miracles, but something I can accept as credible.

I wrote a song called "weekend prayers" were I pray to a lesser god and all i ask for is to survive the weekend. I am broke but is Friday pay day at dawn. So I pray for a woman versed in the boheme and without any attachments. I also ask for redemption in the dance floor in the song. Since I am a non believer I can use the concept as I please without conscience. I am self taught and not prescribed by a writers philosophy to follow or guide me. Abandoning god a was natural progression to me. The whole thing disappeared in front of my eyes while in catholic school. Never to come back. It is just Freedom to me.

Well, I personally believe that no god does exist, mainly because there has been no good argument to believe there is one, no actual evidence suggests that there is a being of divine power. Atheism does not assert there is no god, Atheism is a rejection of belief in god claims.

We can approx Keplar186-F which is 500light years away. More planets, galaxies etc keep revealing while the statistical chance of a deity goes down a billion a day e.g. 1 in a trillion, 1 in two trillion. Until the probability was shown against what seemed impossible we can now determine that 'ridiculous' probability does up while God, any god goes down.

Our trust in science is belief, too. There are beliefs not based on evidence or good reasoning,and then there are rational beliefs that are so based. One could argue that most of our knowledge is basically rational belief (as opposed to absolutely certain knowledge).

I don't think I've ever met an atheist who didn't go the evidence route in their decision. Usually it's the agnostics that feel there must be something, go on a belief that there is, just are accepting that there is no proof and that they have no right to push their belief that there is. Not always, clearly, as I do recognize there are agnostics that don't believe there is on, but there is no way to prove one way or the other.

Well, I'm of the mind that the Universe/Multiverse is just way, WAY too complex to be encompassed by silly ideas like "Big JuJu in the sky." It's all so ENORMOUS and my part in it seems microscopic. But on the other hand, I find it easy to consider the possibility that all reality as I experience it, is the product of the singularity that is my own consciousness.