Why people choose to be atheist

This month's Homiletics and Pastoral Review has a short article discussing reasons people choose to not believe in God. Clearly none of these reasons is valid but it is good to have an idea of why people make the choices they do.

• Intellectual integrity. "I can only believe in things once I see sufficient evidence; I see no such evidence for God's existence; hence I am forced to not believe in God."
  
• The problem of evil. "How can an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing God permit the vast, arbitrary pain and suffering that is such an evident part of life?"
  
• The crimes of believers. "Theists have done bad things; therefore believing in God makes people do bad things; I don't want to do bad things; hence I will not believe in God."
  
• Hatred of religion in general and Christianity in particular. "I just don't like religion period."
  
• The Nietzschean reason. "Belief in God is the opiate of the masses; it makes the world comfortable to live in. But the world is really struggle and hardship and suffering."
  
• Man is the measure of all things. "If there is a God, I am insignificant next to Him. But I am clearly the most intelligent and wonderful of all beings. Therefore there is no God."
  
• Peace of mind. "Sin? Repentance? If I don't believe in God I don't have to feel sorry for my own behavior!"
  
• Intellectual laziness. "Believing in God and making sense of my faith is too much hard work; I'd have to form a conception of a non-material being and follow many complicated arguments. I'll watch football instead."
  
• Conspicuous noncomformity. "America is still basically Christian; to stand against conventional wisdom requires me to be atheist." (Personal note: this maybe true in the Midwest and Bible Belt; where I live on the East Coast, the opposite is true; the noncomformists are the orthodox Christians.)
  
• Libertinism. "I want to eat, drink, be merry, and be sexually adventurous. It requires significant mental compartmentalization and rationalization to be promiscuous and orthodox at the same time. So I'll be atheist."
  
• Hatred of God. "A nun was mean to me in 5th grade."