Hello, @doule and I apologise for taking so long to reply. I'll jump straight in and answer some points you made. I'm a little short on time so please forgive any errors in advance. :-)
Atheism isn't just the simple denial of something - God's existence. It's a world-view that makes many of its own claims about existence.
No. Here you are wrong. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in a god or gods. It makes absolutely no claims about existence. I could believe that the world is perched on the back of a turtle or that we were put here as an experiment by aliens and it would make no difference to the fact that I am an atheist.
And there's plenty of evidence for God's existence, which is why even outside of Christianity and Judaism the possibility of God has always been taken seriously at the least.
There is nothing in this universe that requires a god to explain it. Gods were a way for humankind to explain events etc for which there was then no explanation. As our knowledge of how our world and the universe works has increased the ‘gaps’ available for the claim of a god become less and less.
So, then, you're definitely sure that it was by accident that somehow out of the "Big Bang" came all of this order, and its richness, including most of all beings that make the universe capable of consciously experiencing itself?
It wasn’t ‘by accident’ that we are now where we are. It was by physics, chemistry, evolution along with all the other natural process plus billions of years for them to work.
Do you really not see even the possibility that there may be a spirit world, and a spiritual purpose for this world's existence?
No I don’t and why should there be? We are products of our environment. We have evolved to be what we are. We and all the other species on this planet are continuing to evolve – it is an ongoing, vast, blind, unthinking process with no need for a purpose.
but it's still faith nevertheless.
No. Faith is what is required for when one has no evidence for something. It doesn’t require faith to sit on a chair it just requires a valued judgement that based on past experience and from what I have observed the chair won’t collapse.
From the atheist viewpoint, the universe is at best ambiguous, in terms of whether or not everything has come about through accident, or was created by an all-powerful being. Yet the atheist feels assured that he has the answer, and that it definitely came about by accident. There's truly no definitive evidence for that claim, but the personal opinion of the atheist.
Atheists don't claim to have the answer but there are mountains of evidence – with more being added every day – about how the universe came about. To be sure we don’t know everything – far from it – but our understanding is advancing by leaps and bounds. There is no evidence that a god did it.
To me the majesty of the universe – the billions upon billions of stars with billions of planets down to the quantum scale particles - is awe inspiring. Human created gods working on a human time scale pale into insignificance beside it.
Before I go any further, let me ask you something. It would help me to answer your other questions. What is it that you like so much about atheism?
There is nothing to ‘like’ about atheism. I just do not believe in a god or gods. It is a conclusion I came to after looking at the issue over a number of years.
Although the Alpha course has finished I hope you will still continue to reply to my posts. I’m enjoying the conversation.
Till next time. Take care.