Why I am a strong atheist

I consider myself a strong atheist. That means, not only do I lack belief in gods, I make the positive statement "there are no gods".

Here are my reasons for that:

First of all, we need a workable definition of what a god is. Unfortunately, the religious themselves can't seem to quite agree on that.

Image via WikipediaGods range from good to evil, from dumb to all-knowing, from omnipotent-to barely above humans etc. Even within one particular religion, ideas on how to define god(s) differ significantly. So I wondered, is there any attribute that seems to be essential to all gods? Then it struck me: worship. A god a
pparently is an entity that deserves worship (in the eyes of it's worshippers).

I then went on to ask myself "What makes an entity worthy of worship to you?". The answer is rather simple. I do not think that being powerful, or a creator makes you a candidate straight ahead. If anything, if there was indeed a creator to the universe that could still influence it after having created it, this creator would be responsible for caring properly for it's creation, just like parents are responsible for their children.

I`d say it's rather apparent that no such creator exists, given all the misery and unnecessary suffering in this world. Christians would of course beg to differ, but spending a bad weekend in hell in order to free humanity from the curse you yourself inflicted upon them isn't exactly my idea of acting responsibly.

No, an entity that I would worship would need to be sufficiently powerful and willing to stop all of the useless suffering from catastrophe, disease and what have you in this world. Taking a quick looks at the news, no such being has as of yet showed up.

Therefore I feel quite comfortable to consider myself a strong atheist. Whether the entities that other people worship exist or not is an entirely different matter - so far I have seen no evidence for any of them. Even if one of them was proven to be real, I would not consider it a god.