"What if God is puppies? You believe in puppies, don't you?"

I often see questions like this:

"what if god is time?"

"what if god is science?"

"what if god is simply the order in the universe?"

"what if god is love?"

"... how can you say you don't believe in god?"

Usually accompanied by some kind of assertion that an atheist is assuming a particular god in order to lack belief in gods.

I call this the 'god-is-puppies' argument.

The word 'god', like the word 'toaster', carries meaning. I can claim "When I say toaster I mean a can of minestrone soup" all I like, but if I say "thereby, your claim you don't own a toaster is false - there's a can of minestrone right here in the pantry", you'll get short shrift.

The purpose of words is communication, isn't it?

When you use a word, people tend to understand particular things. If you deliberately choose it to mean something else, and leave them to misunderstand, you're choosing to mislead them. And are thereby a cad and a bounder.

I can call my rat "A Thousand Bucks", but if I offer you a thousand bucks for your car and when you give me the keys, I hand you a rat, you'd rightly be miffed. You'd likely punch me in the nose and take back your keys. If I was lucky.

Where does the responsibility for the miscommunication lie?

It would lie with me, for knowingly using a term people use for one thing to refer to an unrelated thing, in order to convey a different meaning to the one I would claim to use.

Even if you tell them your bizarre definition, so that the deception is lost, the patience for the mental gymnastics required to keep replacing the ordinary word with your odd meaning is likely to be very limited.

So, to "what if god is time?" I say - we have a name for that concept already; it's called time.

If you care to communicate with people, you'll call it that.

When I say I lack belief in gods, I mean the ordinary understanding of the word 'god', like you might find in a dictionary. I'm prepared to adopt a fairly broad interpretation of it, but its basically something along the lines of a powerful supernatural being. Something with intent. Concepts of 'time' or 'science' or 'order' or 'puppies' simply don't have the intended attributes people generally mean when they say 'god'. I can encompass the vaguest of deistic creator-entity hand-waves, but a deity's a deity, not a can of soup.

I don't carry belief in any powerful supernatural beings with intent.

If you want to propose some variation on that ordinary meaning, then ask about that variation and I'll let you know if I carry belief in it, but if you pull the 'god is puppies' type of word-game, I may well be moved to reward your deceptive shenannigans with "You I love with all my heart, and by love I mean, lovingly punch in the snout."

If you're lucky.

Finally - a real alternative to religious classes

The report on the trial of ethics classes in ten NSW schools has come in with a recommendation to adopt the ethics classes alternative model used in the trial.

News story is here.

(Edit: broken link above now repaired)

Since the Premier had already said if the report recommended adoption, that it would be implemented, it looks like it will go ahead next year. On top of the same-sex-couple adoption legislation (her speech), this will make another worthy achievement for her (nevertheless still doomed) government. Keneally will go down at the next election, but if she manages this, I will certainly remember her as having had a number of very worthwhile achievement.

It's worth noting that Keneally is a Catholic, and has an MA in religious studies from a US Catholic university (she was born in and grew up in the US).

Finally, a report that isn't a hatchet-job

The coverage of the 2010 Global Atheists Convention in the Australian media has been generally appalling, full of the usual theist combination of stereotype, bile, and bafflement - "militant" this, "unhappy" that.

However, I was impressed to see one reasonably straightforward, in places even positive, report - which is unusual enough that I thought I'd point to it.

My life is not a marketing exercise

I read so often from liberal theists, faitheists and people who want to frame science, that "aggressive" atheism is "hurting the cause" of atheism or reason or cute puppies, that it will convince nobody and turn off those we wish to convince.

These arguments are long on emotion and very short on evidence. They're also factually inaccurate (in that most so-called "aggressive" atheism is anything but aggressive).

My usual argument has been that not every atheist activity is about convincing others; in fact, hardly any of it, as far as I can see.

My life is not a marketing exercise.

But sometimes it actually does impact those we criticize, and sometimes they come to understand what we're getting at, whether that was the aim or not.

I have read a lot of deconversion stories and related discussion (hundreds by now).
I have seen many times former theists say things along the lines of "Well, actually, I had my faith criticized and it wasn't until that moment that I began to really think about my beliefs."

I've seen comments like that on blogs, in forums, on youtube, yahoo answers and reddit. I saw another only this morning.

Not every deconversion of course - a lot of the time people start thinking about these things themselves, or the trigger to start down that road is something different. But quite a lot of the time, an aggressive challenge to someone's beliefs is actually effective in getting them to think about it. Yes, it will also annoy plenty of people - people don't like having cherished beliefs criticized. You have to pick your moments. But that doesn't mean it is automatically counterproductive.

Being likeable is not often a catalyst for change.

I think being generally thought of as likeable is impossible. Atheists - unless we hide ourselves in a closet forever - will often be regarded as confrontational, simply for existing.

There's absolutely a place for people like Hemant Mehta, with those who seek to actively engage with the religious. More power to him. I think Hemant and people like him do a great deal of good, not only for atheism and reason, but for wider humanity. There's also a place for the louder, less compromising voices.

I have never once seen someone say "my former beliefs were respected and treated with deference - and that was what convinced me they were wrong".

Why would it? How could it?

Yes, if you want to work with theist allies in some other cause, be it gay marriage or proper health care or whatever, it might not be the occasion to critically discuss the truth of their beliefs, but to focus on the current priority. (On the other hand, it's probably never the time to agree to propositions you acually disagree with, or even to hold silent on them, simply for the sake of getting on.)

I think most atheists can manage the distinction between present priorities and longer term goals well enough.

But if we're talking about reason and evidence and skepticism, attempting to promote them and spread them, it makes no sense at all to ignore the most egregious transgressions against them.

If we are trying to get people to critically examine their beliefs, it makes no sense to pat them on the head and tell them we think their crazy beliefs are just dandy. Freedom of belief is only that - to believe as you like. It doesn't mean freedom never to be called on those beliefs. It is not freedom from criticism. It is not freedom from questions.

Our commitment to freedom of belief does not mean we must accept other people's fanstasies as perfectly valid, or that we must meekly hold our tongue when they're brought up. Indeed, we should not. The person you risk offending may also be the person you eventually goad into the line of thought that leads them to convincing themselves.

What could be better than people thinking for themselves?

Facing death

I get into discussions with christians a lot. Recently, I've had a lot of (online) discussion with fairly radical bible-literalist largely-creationist types.

I'm often asked by them if I fear death, and I explain that I came to terms with it years ago. I say I don't fear it at all. Many of them tell me I am lying, or that I am deceiving myself, and when faced with the real prospect of death I will come crying back to the Lawd begging for forgiveness, no-atheists-in-foxholes.

I never bought it - I've come close to death before, and even before I really thought it through, the prospect of dying wasn't that terrifying (pain, on the other hand, I'd really rather avoid, but that's a side issue). But how would I feel NOW?

Well, I recently had a serious prospect of death. I was laying face down on the floor, having crawled a few feet toward the phone and unable to move any further, with all the symptoms of a stroke, and resolved to wait for someone to find me (which I was pretty sure would be no more than ten minutes). So anyway, I had several minutes to ponder the very real possibility I might die, not at some distant time in the future, but with the very real good chance I might die today, possibly right there on the floor.

I didn't actually think death was all that likely, mind you; I was more worried about the prospect of surviving with major defects and being a damn nuisance, but even that didn't seem hugely likely - if things went well, I expected I'd probably come out of it mostly okay, given a few weeks or months at most. But still the prospect that "this could be the day I die" was there.

So how was it?

I felt not the slightest twinge of fear. Not the briefest moment of doubt. I had no impulse to pray. I had no sense that I was risking infinite torture imposed by the merciless and implacable god of the new testament*.

I simply thought that it was possible I might die. It was annoying, like missing the last half of a good TV show that I'd really been enjoying. I was somewhat concerned that my kids might see me dead on the floor, which would be somewhat traumatic. That was it.

So I feel vindicated. I was right. When faced with the immediate, real possibility of death... I don't fear it. Not a whit. All the vile christian threats - they don't work on me any more. Even when I think I might really die.




* This guy (I'm looking at KJV):
Matthew 10:28, 13:41-42, 25:41, 25:46
Mark 4:11-12, 9:43-48, 16:16
Luke 12:5, 13:23-30
John 3:36, 15:6

The unreported tragedy of the missing former atheists - fortunately now found

One thing I have noticed in debating theists, particularly christians, is how often one will tell you they are a "former atheist".

If even half the Christians who paint themselves as "former atheists" had ever actually been recorded as such, atheism, instead of being the fastest growing (in raw numbers) "denomination" in the US, would be by far the fastest shrinking.

At a rough guess, I would say enough christians claim to be former atheists than would overwhelm the number of atheists in the 2008 ARIS survey by a factor of well over five. In the 2001 ARIS survey, the proportion of atheists was - get this - 0.4%; 4 in a thousand. Yet easily several percent of christians seem to proclaim "former atheism"?

What gives? Were they closet atheists?

Even stranger, this group of "former atheists" presents their "former atheism" in a light I have NEVER heard from actual atheists. They were, apparently, every kind of terrible thing that the less enlightened of the rabid rightwing fundies try to paint us as... and they are conveniently held up as experts on everything from science (especially evolution) to atheism to separation of church and state.

Now there are actually a few former atheists of now various theistic stripes whose former atheism was apparent to more than their later selves - so the phenomenon does occur.

But what about all these other ones that appear in debates, on message boards, on interviews, on youtube videos, as subjects of sermons, etc etc?

So where was this enormous group of thieving, drug-addicted, sexually deviant, but all-of-a-sudden-completely open to the message of christianity experts-on-every-subject hiding?

Why weren't they showing up in religious surveys?

Were they all hiding in one large (and presumably unbearably hip) basement?

Or, as seems much more likely, are they largely exaggerators-for-Jesus?

Stunned

I had a bit of a shock. I was chatting to a generally very sensible fellow, when he came out with the "atheism is a faith" bit, accompanied by a bit of mild invective.

Since he was normally given to being very sensible, I asked what made him think that. Turns that we had different definitions of atheism - he understood it to be an absolute, categorical denial of the existence of any gods; in that situation, his claim has at least some basis, and of course some dictionaries do support that definition.

We then had a brief but very reasonable discussion.

It turns out that, under the definition I gave (a-theism, absence of belief in gods), he is an atheist. Indeed, our positions are extremely close (we're both agnostic on knowledge of existence, but both lack belief).

I pointed to some online definitions of atheism to make it clear my definition was not esoteric.

I was really glad I didn't over-react to that old chestnut. He was being quite reasonable, within the scope of his definition.

Not everyone who brings up the "atheism is a faith" thing is a fundie.

TV Science Fiction on humanism and nonbelief

Characters who lack belief are common in SF, yet - unusually for television - they are usually presented in a very positive light. Let's consider a few popular shows.

Star Trek
The characters in the various series are almost universally humanist, and the Federation is almost relentlessly humanist. Star Trek is famous for the sense of hope it conveys about the future, and I think that's largely connected to the humanist sentiment that runs through the entire franchise. In the original series the only main character with any apparent religious sensibilities is McCoy, who does refer to God, and does seem to have a religious background and appears to maintain some level of faith (though he does not appear to be observant of religion). The only main character with any real involvement in even quasi-religious ceremony is Spock, but that ceremony is disconnected from supernatural beliefs. In TNG, the main characters are if anything, more humanist. Worf, while raised by humans, appears to have had enough steeping in Klingon culture to have some degree of acceptance of Klingon religion (he does make reference to Sto'Vo'Kor, for example) and practices some Klingon rituals. None of the humans is particularly religious. Deep Space Nine presents a strongly faith-based culture (the Bajorans), but it is made clear in the show that the beings they base their religion on are not supernatural, simply very powerful aliens.

Firefly
The captain of the Firefly, Mal Reynolds, repeatedly discusses his lack of belief, and is consequently presented as an atheist. One of the other main characters, Book, is a "Shepherd", a kind of priest, but we almost immediately discover very strong indications that he is much more than a simple priest. In one 'episode' (in both senses) River fixes Book's bible, by removing or changing all the parts that make no sense - the book ends up in tatters. The main "spiritual" character is Inara, her religious sensibilities are more Eastern, and several times she is seen to minister to Book; to my recollection, one episode ends with what can only be described as a kind of benediction - Book kneels before her in misery while she places her hand on his head in a metaphorical blessing. Religion may be somewhat important in the wider culture (it features in several episodes, but is as frequently a source of hatred and manipulation as much as comfort), but it is not important in the lives of most of the most of the crew. A sense that people will be good or evil with or without religion clearly comes through. Firefly is somewhat more independent and libertarian in sentiment than the other shows, but many of its characters have a strong humanist bent.

Battlestar Galactica
This show is unusual in that it's an overtly religious society, though many characters are not particularly religious (and a few are openly doubtful). Doubters are not regarded as "evil". Religious and nonreligious characters generally seem broadly accepting of each other. The main religion of the humans is polytheistic, that of the Cylons is monotheistic. Several humans become much more religious over time, but one is of dubious sanity (starting out sane and atheist and becoming apparently insane and somehwat religious); in each case the increase in belief is associated with apparent evidence consistent with that belief (even though some of the resulting beliefs are contradictory).

Stargate
Stargate is another overtly "humanist" program, but it is much more explicit in its treatment of religion. There are three main "enemies" in the series - the Goa'uld, the Replicators and the Ori. The first and last are gods to their followers - false gods, but gods with great powers nonetheless, so it is little surprise that they have great followings. The heroes aim to convince their followers that those they worship are not gods, and ultimately to defeat the false gods. None of the main characters are religious (though Te'alc is initially a believer, he throws off his religion). The Ori in particular, mirror the worst aspects of fundamentalist, dominionist religiosity.

Dr Who
The Doctor himself is an avowed lover of humanity, and the show is unremittingly humanist. Religious themes do come into the show sometimes, but the explanation is generally more on the natural side than the supernatural.

All of these programs deal in some way with "constructed families"; Firefly is probably the most explicit of these, but in each of them, "family" is something you make, not somethng you are. 'Traditional' families are not a major aspect of any of the shows (on DS9, Chief O'Brien has a 'traditional' family ... and marriage problems); one parent families are common. Yet love and loyalty to friends and colleagues run very strongly in all of the programs. All four show quite clearly that morality and religious belief are largely orthogonal. Stargate is perhaps the strongest in its anti-faith message (it takes no clear position that all religions are false - but all the religions that have a substantive place on the show clearly are false, dangerous and evil). People who lack overt belief are common, and almost all of them are moral, heroic, loyal, loving... and most of all, human.

Science Fiction, and in particular, TV science fiction - because of it reaching a large and regular audience, has a small but significant influence on our society. Because it is forward looking, the influence is generally strongly progressive, and in the way it presents its major characters, generally presents atheism in an extremely positive way, far out of keeping with the common depiction of atheists in other programmes (who are often presented as cold, abrasive, misanthropic or amoral, when they're presented at all).

--

Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?
River: Fixing your Bible.
Book: I, um... What?
[River is working on a mangled bible. Passages have been crossed out or corrected. Loose pages lie about.]
River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics... doesn't make sense.
Book: No, no. You - you can't...
River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. [She looks him in the eye.] Noah's ark is a problem.
Book: Really?
River: We'll have to call it "early quantum state phenomenon". Only way to fit [laughing quietly] 5,000 species of mammals on the same boat... [She rips more pages out.]
Book: River, you don't... fix the Bible.
River: [Speaking gently.] It's broken. It doesn't make sense.
Book: It's not about... making sense. It's about believing in something. And letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.
(Book tries to pull some of the ripped out pages from River's hand, but they tear.)
Book: You hang on to those then.

Firefly: Jaynestown

Why I look forward to the death of atheism

As should already be obvious, I'm an atheist.

But I'm an atheist who looks forward to a time when there are no people who identify as atheist - to the death, as it were, of atheism.

After all, I don't identify as an a-tooth-fairy-ist; it's just naturally accepted that as an adult, I don't carry such a belief. Being an atoothfairyist is so universally common that it isn't even a term. Atoothfairyism, if it were ever to have existed, is certainly now long dead. It's not necessary to identify as a skeptic of the religious beliefs prevalent in ancient Greece. Such a lack of belief is, essentially, a dead issue.

So it goes with the religions presently at large -- I hesitate to say "modern religion", because there's little about their fundamentals that's modern. I look forward to the day when it's utterly pointless to ever mention a lack of belief in them, because it is essentially universal. When that day comes, atheism as we presently understand it, will be utterly dead. We'll just be people, getting on with life.

Maybe then we can really get to work of fixing the mess we're in.

Religion in its purest form... is a vast work of bunkum

Dana at En Tequila Es Verdad discusses an interview in Salon with James Carse.

He (Carse) condemns Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris for not being "historians or scholars of religion" and so "it's too easy for them to pass off a quick notion of what religion is."

This is a common argument; PZ called it the "Courtiers Reply". The fact is, when atheists engage with less sophisticated versions of religion, they're doing it because that's what people believe. Was Dawkins' aim to engage with esoteric, sophisticated versions of religious belief? No. Indeed, it's a pointless effort, because the apologist can simply keep moving their goalposts, and refusing to pin down exactly what it is they would expect the atheist to engage with. Carse's difficulty in defining religion in the interview is a case in point.

What these atheists do is argue with veiws on religion that people actually hold.

My first thought on reading this was "he's got a double standard there - he's not asking Christians to study sophisticated versions of other religions, to be historians or scholars of religion before they reject other religions".

But actually, what made me write this is that I realized it's worse than this. There's an even worse double standard.

Carse says:
"To be an atheist, you have to be very clear about what god you're not believing in. Therefore, if you don't have a deep and well-developed understanding of God and divine reality, you can misfire on atheism very easily."

Apparently, the meaning of atheism is lost on him, since, of course, we lack belief in any gods (unless gods are defined so weakly that the term becomes, essentially, pointless).

That's funny, because Carse is apparently attempting "to find some underlying unity to all religions".

His understanding of atheism is laughable. He also says:

"To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the universe."

So while he berates atheists for failing to have the sophisticated understanding that would come from being an historian and religious scholar, he can't even do us the courtesy of engaging with an everyday relatively unsophisticated version of atheism. Instead, he makes up his version of atheism out of whole straw.

That's an astounding double standard.

Am I A Positive Atheist?

I wrote a longer version of this post, but it has been eaten by a grue. This one is different.

I was about to start writing the first version of this when I noticed that Dana asks "What kind of atheist are you?". An interesting coincidence, because in some way this post is related.

I must admit a certain amount of confusion with the term "positive atheism". I don't see atheism as inherently positive or negative. (I see the step of throwing off irrational faith in favour of reality as a positive one, but that's a benefit of becoming an atheist, not of being one in the sense that it's not an active process.)

Being an atheist, living as an atheist, is neither positive nor negative. You can live a positive life, or a negative one, or anything in between, and be an atheist. Atheism is orthogonal to positivity.

This might seem incongruous, given I just had a post in the 21st Humanist Symposium. Humanism is the sort of philosphy people tend to associate with "positive atheism" and the Humanist Symposium's brief is definitely about living positively, but humanism and atheism are quite different - many atheists are humanists, and many others are not. Many humanists are also not atheists. But, nevertheless, many atheists are attracted to humanism. I agree with many of its tenets, but I don't see humanism as connected to atheism, so to me it's not really "positive atheism", it's just humanism, and neither is necessary to the other. Similarly, my post was about using probability to figure out that some apparently worrisome things may be nothing to worry about, and that an understanding of probability could help lift burdens of worry from our lives. But again, it's not atheism that's doing that. Atheism's job came earlier, in removing the attempt to explain such events as the acts of an incomrehensible and all-powerful god (the positive step of becoming an atheist). With that non-answer out of the way, there is room for the rational explanations of probability to make their positive contribution. So it is with humanism and other positive worldviews that many atheists have.

I'm generally a very positive and content person. I happen to be positive, and I happen to be an atheist.

But the phrase "positive atheism" (and for that matter, all the negative epithets theists throw at atheism) just doesn't have any more resonance for me than "yellow music" does.

Cectic's take on the atheist billboard

Regular readers will have seen my take on the atheist billboard hullaballoo:

(click image to embiggen)


Cectic has a terrific comic on the same issue.

(Displayed here with permission.)

Be careful what you wish for

One thing the Republicans have done over the past couple of decades is increasingly polarize the electorate, and really put effort into the politics of hate. That's a popular strategy with totalitarian governments, because it gets people looking the direction you want them to (anywhere but at what you're actually doing).

It worked, as it usually does. Among other things, they pandered to what they call "values voters". The thing is, people on both "sides" of politics (an oversimplification if ever there was one) vote their values. The Republican fear-mongering grabbed a bit of the middle as well, and so it worked well - a die-hard core plus a good chunk of the ordinary everyday person, at the expense of the people who are less likely to vote for you will get you power - for a time.

But the problem is that the people they have upset the most are growing, while the people that they're relying on are both shrinking and abandoning(1) them(2) in revulsion(3). Young voters, in particular, are increasingly secular, and that's a problem for Republicans, because they have attacked the secular and their values at every turn.

The Republicans are beginning to reap what they have sown.

Blogger Nate at FiveThirtyEight talks about the problem McCain has with nonreligious voters.

The religious only slightly favour McCain over Obama. The nonreligious overwhelmingly favour Obama. As time goes on, unless the Republicans move toward the centre, they're going to increasingly lose the now-secularizing middle, and their history of vile attacks on them won't be quickly forgotten. If they do move toward the centre, they'll lose what remains of the right-wing evangelicals. Things are not looking good for the Republicans in the next 3 or 4 elections, unless they can completely reinvent themselves. I don't think they'll be able to do it.

They could stew for a generation in the cesspit they've dug for themselves - and they'll still stink less than they do now.

Faitheism: ...and I'm politically active by not voting, too.

        (Click to enlarge)

The Agony and the Ecstathy

Let's get it out right up front.

I'm an atheist.

I've been an atheist for several decades now. When I was three I believed in fairies. (Heck, I was for a good while convinced I had spoken with some once, though I couldn’t really understand most of what they were saying.) I believed in Santa Claus. I believed in ghosts (and for many years I was certain I saw one). As a kid growing up in rural Australia, I had regular exposure to mostly fairly mild forms of Christianity and not much else. We didn’t go to church, but it was just part of the culture. I had some religious instruction in school, but it was generally pretty low-key. I sort of picked up some of the beliefs of the society I was in, but even as a kid I was questioning the bits that didn't make sense. I came to stop believing in fairies (though I couldn’t immediately explain the conversation I’d had as a three year old).. I eventually stopped believing in Santa Claus, though I kept it to myself – I didn’t want to interfere with anyone else’s enjoyment. I eventually stopped believing in ghosts.

I did read the bible (we had one at home), but I didn't take most of it at face value, and what little religious instruction I had encouraged me to consider at least parts of it as allegorical.

To be honest, the moment I had started to come to terms with my own mortality (by the time I hit my teens, I guess), I no longer had more that a mild susceptibility to belief in the more common notions of God. I guess you might have described me as a form of deist, though I didn’t know the term. By the time I was about 15 or 16 I described myself as an agnostic. But I still read the bible.

Reading the bible, actually reading it, studying it, comparing part with part, trying to understand what it's actually describing and suggesting, was a fantastic cure for any lingering belief. It had some cool parts, sure enough, and some of the language was poetic, even beautiful (KJV), but it had parts that were pretty horrible.

I knew there were other religions. They couldn’t all be true. Suppose that one religion was in fact true. People almost without exception seemed to follow the religion of their parents. Why would the religion a person was just born into necessarily be that “right” one? That suggested that a certain degree of skepticism of the religion one grew up with was perhaps wise, unless there was evidence to the contrary.

I happened to read of Pacal’s Wager at about this time. There was an immediately obvious flaw, even to my teenage self. The same argument could be applied to any potential religion that offered the same deal – what made the one you just happened to grow up around privileged? I was astonished that Pascal had not seen it himself, since he was apparently a smart guy. (I am less astonished now, since I understand the context he operated in a little better. Oh, and I also see a number of other problems in the reasoning.)

Once I got to university, I looked around at other religions (I read a good chunk of the Koran, I discussed Buddhism with Buddhists, I found out about Hinduism and Wicca), but I never took any of it terribly seriously - it was more a matter of finding out about beliefs than pursuing one of my own. There was stuff in each of them that was pretty good. There was also stuff that was plainly silly.

I guess I would have continued to describe myself as an agnostic until at least my early twenties, but I had long before ceased to have any doubt of significance; I was maintaining a facade of doubt.

Why?

Well, unless you've ever expressed significant religious doubt, maybe you've never encountered it, but believers, even seemingly "mild" ones, seem by and large to be incredibly threatened by the mere presence of disbelief. Normally calm people can become quite agitated and upset. It concerns me that someone’s belief can be so fragile that the mere presence of disbelief can be so threatening. I don’t like upsetting people. I never have. So I avoided even admitting to it.

I maintained my less threatening agnostic facade well past its use-by-date simply to avoid offending people. Eventually I came to terms with that, and just said - "well, at least say it out loud to yourself". So I did. I said, quietly, "I am an atheist. To be honest, I really have been for a long time now."

What an incredible relief that was. It was like breathing after holding my breath for years. To stand up and look around at the here and now, and to at last be completely free of the small, petty, closed-in view of things that had turned my face away from the world.

It was a quiet moment of bliss, of ecstasy.

But it was not the end of my journey. I have continued to think, and read, and, listen. I will tell some of my stories here, and discuss some of my thoughts, and point to interesting things others say and write.

I still don't like to upset people, but I have become convinced that it's necessary to speak, and simply accept that people will be upset.

I'm an atheist. I'm mostly very happy. Sometimes I'm ecstatic