It is more reasonable to me, as it is to any atheist, to believe in things that are in accord with what we know are natural laws, than to believe in things that contradict them….[but] unless you\u2019re raised atheist, people become atheists just as I did, by thinking about the same things Augustine thought about. Certainly one of the first things I thought about as a maturing child was \u201cWhy is there polio? Why are there diseases?\u201d\u009d If there is a good God why are there these things? The answer of the religious person is \u201cGod has a plan we don\u2019t understand.\u201d\u009d That wasn\u2019t enough for me. There are people who don\u2019t know anything about science. One of the reasons I recommend Richard Dawkins\u2019s book, The God Delusion, is that basically he explains the relationship between science and atheism. But I don\u2019t think people are really persuaded into atheism by books or by debates or anything like that. I think people become atheists because they think about the world around them. They start to search out books because they ask questions. In general, people don\u2019t become atheists at a late age, in their 50s. All of the atheists I know became atheists fairly early on. They became atheists in their adolescence or in their 20s because these are the ages at which you\u2019re maturing, your brain is maturing, and you\u2019re beginning to ask questions. If religion doesn\u2019t do it for you, if, in fact, religion, as it does for me, contradicts any rational idea of how to live, then you become an atheist, or whatever you want to call it \u201d\u201c an agnostic, a freethinker.<\/p>\n