You are equating what most religious people I know consider to be divine power with magic. The concepts might be close, but there is a distinction. Because that divine power is manifested in ways humans cannot explain or comprehend doesn't reduce it to some sort of "hocus-pocus" trick.
I'm using "magic" here to mean any supernatural force or power outside of or beyond the physical laws the govern the universe. Miracles, direct divine intervention by a personally involved god, supernatural events, and so on all qualify as 'magic' as I'm using the word.
You can substitute "supernatural divine power" for "magic" in what I wrote, if you prefer, and it still stands. One of the things I find most fascinating about religious faith is the notion that there is no awe and majesty in the universe without supernatural divine power.
Wow, you sure "know" a lot. Or, are those perhaps just beliefs you hold... which similarly provide good feelings and some type of security (true/false/whatever)?
The distinction between beliefs based on faith and beliefs that are not faith-based is that beliefs that are not based on faith are not taken with no evidence to support them.
The fact that we do not yet know everything there is to know does not justify faith-based beliefs; this is merely the 'god of the gaps.' A stone-age society might have two people arguing about what the sun is; Ogg might argue that the sun is a god, and Gronk might argue that even though he doesn't know what the sun is or what the sun is made out of, it's a natural phenomenon and not a god.
Ogg could say that he and Gronk have beliefs that are based on faith...but Ogg would be wrong. And, as knowledge progesses, Ogg's sun-god shrinks away, until finally Ogg's far descendents realize that Ogg was absolutely, totally wrong.
The problem with the god of the gaps is that that god gets smaller and smaller every day. Every day, we learn more; every day, there becomes less room to say "We don't know what caused X, so it must be some sort of god."
So you're saying people would be more responsible if no one thought God exists? You'll have to explain the logic. I can't wrap my head around that until I can stop shaking it.
How many hospitals were founded by Atheist organizations?
Many.
The "How many hospitals were founded by atheists?" trope pops up on Fundamentalist Web sites all the time, with the implied answer of "none," but the people who ask the question don't really know the answer.
The first hospital in the US, founded before the country was even a country back in 1658, was established in New Amsterdam (now called New York) by Jacob Hendrickszen Varrevanger. He was not a religious person; it was not a religious hospital.
The oldest hospital still in use in the US, Bellevue Hospital in New York, was founded as a secular institution by the New York government in 1736.
Benjamin Franklin, known for his non-theist religious beliefs, founded several hospitals in the US and in France.
Today, only about 13% of all US hospitals are religious or connected to religious organizations, primarily the Catholic Church. There were as of 1999 a total of 604 hospitals in the US founded by ir on affiliation with religious organizations, out of a total of 4,573 hospitals.
How many hospitals were founded by atheist organizations?
Seven and a half times more than were founded by religious organizations!
Just for the record, I'm a non-believer and I have decided that I don't care of someone is a believer provided that he/she leaves others alone and remains content to practice religion in private. If believing in a deity gets you through life, that's OK with me. Life is difficult enough as it is.
That would be fine, if that's all there were.
The problem is that there is no major organized faith that does not tell its adherents that it is the only "true" faith. We see from history and from modern politics that, even despite resource competition and political power grabs and land wars and all the other stressors that can lead to violence, people fracture along religious lines more readily than along any other.
Faith--believing things with no proof for no reason other than that the believer wants them to be true--leads inevitably to atrocity. Science flies us to the moon; faith flies us into buildings.
We live in a society whose politics, public policy, foreign relations, and laws are all shaped and distorted by faith. George Bush invoked religion as a supporting reason to invade Iraq. Beliefs about the soul led to the ban on stem cell research. The Reagans consulted astrologers before making policy decisions; the Bushs consulted ultra-fundamentalist Christian pastors.
There is no "practice your faith by yourself in your own home." Never has been.
