Atheism is a reasonable position for a person to hold.

I am truly interested in trying to understand the perspective of others. This is also my first formal debate in this or any venue or media. Still I have thought much about this topic and have watched many debates on a variety of topics so it is my hope that I will be a worthy opponent. While it sounds as though we may not disagree about very much for this round I will just provide my arguments in support of the proposition. The meaning of atheism that I am using is simply the lack of belief in a god. It is not unreasonable to lack belief in a god because it is just an acknowledgment or perhaps an assessment of a mental state. There are not very many things that one could know better empirically than the thoughts and ideas in ones own head. And even if you don't know them very well no one else is in a position to know them any better than you. Since atheism is about belief in a god, for the reasons stated previously, it is not unreasonable to hold this position and likewise since theism is about belief in a deity it is not unreasonable to know that one believes that either. However there are beliefs that are unreasonable to hold. I am a proponent of rationally justified belief and I think peoples beliefs should conform to evidence and logic. Many religious beliefs do not conform to evidence and logic. Since this isn't even an argument I intended to make initially I will give just a brief example of what I mean. I find the idea of substitutional atonement to be incoherent and nonsensical (i. e. not conforming to evidence or logic). Just the idea that sacrificing young "pure" (whatever that means) animals to God for wrongdoing is something god wants or wanted is bizarre and I haven't heard any good evidence that any person could realistically know that a God would want or accept that. Atheism is generally more reasonable than religious belief because atheism is about a singular thing while religious beliefs are actually a plethora of varying incredibly complex tapestries of ideas. So it must be admitted it is far easier for religious belief to run afoul of reason than the more basic notion of atheism. There are very sophisticated elaborations of religious beliefs which I find not much fault with but these differ markedly from most people's understanding and belief about their religions. The form of atheism I am arguing is reasonable is the lack of belief in a god. As opposed to the belief that there are no gods. Now you say in your opening statement that "atheism is no more reasonable than religious belief, which is itself unreasonable. ". But what good reasons do people have to think that their religious beliefs are true? Not many and often the contradictions and contra evidence make the beliefs even more untenable and unjustified. Now what good reasons do I have for not believing? Well I have never heard or examined evidence or a reason for believing that I found compelling and I think that in that absence my position is more reasonable. For most other things I think we would agree unless we have reasons and evidence to believe something exists we don't believe it does. One last thing before I close. I find that while religious people very rarely ascribe their belief to the ontological argument or the kalam cosmological argument. Many atheists who were formerly religious do ascribe their atheism to logical arguments and the concept of justified or rational belief. I am not among them. Non belief for me was just a personal realization. I was raised catholic and it always seemed weird to me. I finally just admitted to myself and everyone that I didn't believe. I was eight or nine. I then later thought well what if I am wrong but I could never find a compelling reason to believe. I am going to close here. I look forward to reading your opening argument. I thought I would need a lot of space to explain why what religious people think is evidence for God isn't but judging by your acceptance statement that is unnecessary as was some of what I included anyway.