athiests vs thiests

I've just found this discussion, and realize it's 4 weeks old, but, if you're still around, I'd be interested in participating. I am an atheist. At this point, I think the answer to some of life's biggest questions aren't known. We don't yet (and may never have) enough information to explain why and how we and the universe came to be. I am pretty confident that the processes that brought us into existence aren't the product of an entity with a mind. Minds seem to be tied to material structures. When a person develops alzheimer's disease, his or her personality and sense of who he or she is starts to errode, along with his or her memories. This suggests to me that minds don't float in space seperate from bodies. When beings with minds create things, all our experience shows us that a body is also necessary. Birds build nests with their beaks; we create what we desire and need with our hands. We don't see brains wishing things or commanding things into existence. God apparently created without hands, and spoke to prophets without a mouth or a voice. When I observe nature, I see complex processes unfolding automatically. Plants and animals grow from single cells into complex forms, all by themselves. All we can do as complicated creatures with minds, is modify the conditions that encourage a seed to grow or an animal to conceive, but we don't need to put the adult plant or animal together bit by bit, and we don't detect any other entity helping either. It seems like our ancestors, without knowlege of modern physics, chemistry and biology, surmised that a "super" version of ourselves must have been responsible for creating all that we see, but now that we know a lot more about how nature works, it doesn't make sense to me to subscribe to that belief. My question for you is, what are your thoughts on why the universe is so vast and unpopulated? Why would God create this tiny world in an enormous and apparently lifeless universe, and be so concerned about what one species upon it thinks about him? Why was the world populated with so much life ranging from single celled creatures to dinosaurs, before people came to exist on Earth? I know these questions sound a bit rehtorical, but I'm genuinely intersted in your thoughts. Thank you.

Until the islam religion catches up to the 21st century, nobody in their right mind should even think about converting to it.