David Morgan (MAMS) wrote:

Everything evolves... nothing is the same today as it was yesterday.  Let's
not confuse the dictionary definition of the word with Charles Darwin's
attrocious concepts that we were all once amoeba and then monkies,
before suddenly popping into homosapiens.

Mickey Mouse science is alive and well and living in America. I have never met a scientist who said I used to be an amoeba.

There are also
some inexplicable short-term pattern changes that beg the justification
of external influence, or "steering" as you say.

Please show us this evidence for steering and a steerer.

See the 'gap(s)' implied by my statement above.

As to a "steerer" (?)...  you got me pal.

Same goes for creation of planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies.. This
scientific knowledge has brought me to my position: atheist freethinker.
When new knowledge arrives, I'm totally open to changing my position, since
that's the way I gained it in the first place.

This merely implies that you have a belief system....  Welcome to "faith".

How is an absence of belief faith?  What is faith?

Use a dictionary.  And please, don't claim now that you have a sudden "absence
of belief" in the virtually the same breath you just used to describe your belief in
evolution.  To believe in something is in fact a "faith" in that issue.  Again, see
the Webster's, and do so without being pre-disposed to typical religious terms.

If anybody wants to learn the definition of any word that causes Christians to sit up an pay attention the last thing they should do is consult Webster's dictionary. Mein Kampf is less biased.

Why should there be a problem with atheists having beliefs in anything? How is this against their religion? Atheists don't have a religion. Atheists are not a coherent group any more than are "people whose surnames begin with letters in the second half of the alphabet". The only thing everybody in each group has in common is the fact that they belong to that group as per the definition. I have come across many atheists who I disagree with intensely to the point that I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. Atheists are people who don't (at this moment, for whatever reason, or lack of reasons) believe in gods, or at least people who can't say for certain that they do believe in gods, or understand the question, or want to understand the question. Sanity, consistency, logic and detailed prior examination of the issue in question are not prerequisites.