They don’t preclude belief in a god, no. But neither do they require, encourage or even provide evidence for one. It just doesn’t matter. You’re looking at his statement with the assumption that a god exists, not from the logical starting point and building from there.
I’d recommend a Comparitive Religions course, to really allow the kids to make up their minds.
For myself, that was the best affirmation of my atheism that I ever experienced. 
As long as you aren’t suggesting that the logical starting point is the assumption that God doesn’t exist, then I agree with you. I suppose I wasn’t very clear about that in my post, but I wasn’t trying to suggest that they were reasons to believe.
I think the logical starting point (unbiased) would be having no opinion on the matter, and most (if not all) of us can’t really claim to be able to start from there, since we’re already biased toward one side or the other.
I think you’ll find that most, if not all atheists have been started at that logical beginning (not having an opinion one way or another) at some point in their life. The lack of this particular belief in our particular society almost requires it as a stage if beliefs have evolved for an individual. Atleast that is my experience.
Even better. I must say that the chapter on religions in my daughter’s seventh grade social studies text treated all the world’s religions equally and fairly. On the other hand, traditional Protestants are a tiny minority of our district, being far outnumbered by Hindus, Moslems and Mormons.
The only logical starting point is the null hypothesis, which is that no gods of any variety exist. Then evidence can be introduced arguing for any number of gods. Say you start with the null hypothesis, but then argue that cosmological arguments require a creator. Okay, this is evidence for some god, but which one? You’d next look at the creation stories of various religions, and try to find one that best matches the data we have about the origin of the universe. The null hypothesis is a starting point, not an end point, but you need evidence to move off of it.
Ditto, I never “got” all that cult nonsense, no matter how many times the priests or teachers beat us around the head with it at school.
Its not a matter of what’s kept me from truely beleiving, a better question might be what is there to make me beleive? 
I respectfully disagree. I think the ‘null hypothesis’ would be that it is undetermined whether or not God exists (or gods exist), and it is from there that you move toward a conclusion on one side or the other.
But that’s just my opinion. 
I was raised Anglican, but I don’t think my parents were ever fervent believers. I went to Sunday school and church as a youngster, but don’t ever remember believing in a god (although I probably had some vague belief in God when I was young, the same way I did in Santa Claus). I finally announced when I was 10-11 that I wasn’t going to go to Confirmation and didn’t believe in God. My mother had our minister come and talk to me, but I just repeated that I didn’t believe in God, and I just stayed home on Sundays after that until eventually the family stopped going at all. I still see no reason to believe in the existance of any god or other “prime force”.
Atheists dont have access to public forums or schools, as a rule. They are not able tol indoctrinate from an early age. Muslims are bred to religion. Catholics are too. The programming starts young and it is psychologically aaccurate. We have 2 great religions having great dificulty letting the other live in peace. Atheists have to shed the programming and learn to make their own decisions.
In the words of Dr. Phil hows it working for you. We have Catholics screaming for abortion doctors to be killed. They are waiting for the end of days when god will suck the bekievers out of their clothes and take them to heaven. We have Muslim women who wage huge fights to wear the muslim clothes at all cost. The men are taught that non believers must be killed.
You ask why we dont believe. What the hell makes you believe in a religion which guarantees war and strife. The killing of innocents is assured. Just stop and yhink.