[CrochityOldMan]

I think it is fairly obvious that one can chose not to be affiliated with any official religion; it is also obviously possible for one to reject the existence of any god. I think the real question at hand is: is it possible to believe in anything without faith? Even the philosopher David Hume (who was an atheist and an empiricist) believed that faith was necessary to understand the world. His two principle beliefs were: he would only believe anything that could A) be empirically proven, or B) something that was true by definition (I e 2+2=4 or a=b b=c then a=c.) However he admits that empirical evidence is based on faith as well as inductive reasoning. The reason inductive reasoning is based on faith is because it is impossible to defend inductive reasoning without using inductive reasoning. I.E. if all the swans you have seen are white then you inductively conclude that all swans are white. However when you try to defend this approach the only argument that has been given is: inductive reasoning has worked in the past so it will work in the future. But this it is using inductive reasoning. Faith it seems is necessary to function as a scientist or as a pope. The point here is that many people become atheists because they want to avoid having to use faith in there systems of beliefs. Yet this only appears to work because faith is necessary for practically any belief.