[Alex]

I've never believed in a god or anything supernatural (being bluntly honest, to me defining god as "the universe" is absurdism) so I can't speak to the benefits of a "conversion." All that happened was eventually I found the nerve to tell my parents I thought it was a crock.

On the topic of labels, I've said previously that if you want to get technical I'm not an atheist. I don't know there is no god, no supernatural entity. So, technically I would be agnostic. It is simply that in the absence of any evidence or reason to assume such an existence I live my life as if there is none (just as I live on the assumption that all the other infinite things for which there is no evidence or reason to assume don't actually exist). I can't recall if I saw someone else say it or I made it up but I refer to this as pragmatic atheism.

As for benefits, to me I see it as not wasting time on things that don't matter. You reference Pascal's Wager in your post (why not believe in God since if you're wrong there's no penalty and if you're right the reward is huge) but the flaw in that is too glaring to me to ignore. Namely that it isn't a binary choice of believe in god or not but rather believe in the wrong god or not. Sure, I could choose to belief (if "choice" is truly possible) in a god that accepts all, but my definition of god does not create such a god. So even if I choose to believe odds are I'll still get it wrong (what if the only people who have it right are one of those uncontacted Amazonian tribes, may decision of faith will not have served me any purpose).

Plus, the big harm I see in the magical thinking of religion (faith in that for which there is no evidence simply because it feels - or someone has convinced you it is - right) is that it conditions people to believe in magical thinking in other areas of life where it most definitely has harmful impacts (water dowsing, psychic healing, and homeopathy are orders of magnitude reasonable, based on available evidence, than god. Also, and while this is not true of everybody, religion misused removes the possibility of debate as a social tool. Received wisdom can not be argued.

Yes, the tools of science can and frequently are misused but it contains within itself a process for debate and while it can be slow it generally works.

Ultimately, though, I just don't see the benefit of believing something to be true simply because it makes me feel better to believe it. And if I did, there are things I'd believe in long before I got around to worrying about what happens after I die. Such as believing that if I'm fat long enough I will eventually gain the power of flight and invisibility (which, from my point of view, isn't any more silly an idea than the thought that God created the universe so that Jews would have somewhere to live).

As for proselytizing atheism, I honestly don't care what other people believe up until they start trying to use those believes as a tool for managing other people (and this is true of religious and non-religious thought). That said, I do like to explore what people, including myself, believe. But me saying "I think you've got it all wrong" does not mean "I think you should change just because I think that."