Atheism

Am I a theist?  No.  Am I therefore atheist?  Ah - a little more clarity is called for, no?  The correct, short answer is that I am a-theistic, or not a believer of any god concept.  But the way many people today use the word atheist is to ascribe to someone a belief while the individual is proclaiming non-belief.

Words in the English language always beg to be played with by nutty semi-linguists such as I.  (And I don't want to cheapen this by calling myself cunning.)

Fun with words and phrases can be kept in the humorous mode while also at times asserting subtle nuances, but we also have to be sure that our audience is able to laugh along with the supposed wit.  For instance, it's in the poorest of taste for anyone to make light of rape, even if it's legitimate!  (Sorry about that.)  But consider the opportunity offered in the language to muse on this strange coincidence:  After a woman is raped she would likely seek therapy - ergo, facing the prospect of walking right through the office door with a sign reading Therapist, or the rapist.  Probably not a very comforting idea.

But back to the subject at hand - words that deal with god or no-god, and how do we label ourselves?  That is the question.

One of the Free Thought Bloggers wrote this in a recent post:   At this moment, atheists dominate humanists, agnostics, freethinkers, rationalists, secularists and all those other squishy sub-categories who are still squirming at the ‘A’ label. If you’re not convinced that any actual deity really exists, then you’re an atheist.  It’s that easy.

Nope - not that easy!  And this assertion above is part of the reason it isn't easy.  The writer has a touch of the belligerent approach here.  If he isn't being actually militant in his stand, he is at least a bit aggressive and challenging - much like today's numerous vocal atheists who are challenging, maybe even militant, toward religionists.  He's not being merely not theistic but is actively opposing theists.  In the above comment, the writer also bates me along with other freethinkers, belittling our stance as timid or holding a weak position for one who is "not convinced an actual deity really exists."  While I am quite comfortable having no belief in and no concern whatever for a potential phantom deity, I am still not trying to challenge everyone I meet by using toxic terms.  Nor does this cry for peace between believers and non-believers make me a faitheist - that newly coined hybrid word that tries to cover those who are on some kind of fence between the two.  Even such a noted atheist as Michael Shermer has been labeled in this pejorative way, and also called an accommodationist, which is its own pejorative within a select group.  My personal life today (after years as a fundie and three-times as many years as an escapee), is far from any fence, walking boldly in any direction I choose but always away from that arcane world of belief.  More on this in a moment.

The trouble is in the meanings of terms, meanings that are continuously changing; in the case of atheist, the original meaning has long been slanted.  In most usage, it has lost the simple meaning of not a theist.  It actually could be likened to the current (and likely future) meaning ascribed to the word gay, as an example.  Though you may well be a person who enjoys life and might have said (in a time now past) that you were happy and gay, or that you had a gay old time at the party, why would you not likely now use that expression?  The meaning of gay has been altered and most heterosexual males, even if not homophobic, would typically not take the chance on using the term.  The desire to avoid confusion is essentially the reason many of us don't wave the flag of atheism.

One of my long-time friends, a former devotee of a cult I also represented as a minister, calls himself now an atheist, although he places qualifiers along with that term.  In his bio, he says that he has become an ardent agnostic atheist (that's one way to belong to triple-a).  I rather like the qualifiers.  A newer acquaintance who endured a long stint within the same quirky fundamentalist sect calls himself an atheist and doesn't qualify it.  Or at least, no qualifiers have shown up yet in our private communications.

Why have I never chosen to label myself flatly as an atheist?  I certainly am no longer associated with any concept of theism and have no interest whatever in whether there is or is not a god of any kind.  The matter of not claiming the atheist handle was, for me, quite simply the desire to stay more in a neutral zone.  Perhaps you've noticed the reference in my blog's title.

In actual fact, if we were all etymological purists, sticking with the original meaning of the term atheist should be neutral enough.  [One who is theistic believes in a god; one who is a-theistic does not.]  However, the usage has morphed over the years.  This may explain why many people who wish to seem less aggressively anti-god will refer to themselves as non-theists.  Like me, I suppose, these folks have heard over many decades the spitting out of the word atheist, knowing full-well that the speaker judged someone very harshly indeed for holding such a horrible belief.

And now the term belief comes into play, adding to the confusion.  Those inclined to believe in a god have come to see someone who is neutral (having NO belief in any god) as holding a belief that there is NO GOD.  Big difference here - again owing to the semantic nuances available within the language.  Having  no belief in a god is not the same as having a belief there is no god.  This very twist came up recently when I had written to an old friend that I no longer had any belief in any gods.  Her reply stated something about "If I believed there was no God,..." which immediately addressed the twist in meaning of words and phrases.

Though I don't often use Wikipedia as an authority on words, this is one time I chose to check into that source first.  Why?  Because that website is intrinsically a part of the realm of current and active usages that show up as accepted meanings for today.  The meaning given to atheist shows within the first short paragraph to be one of those ever-changing things.  You might call it definition-creep.  Today's common meanings of the words atheist and atheism have crept so far from the original that vast numbers of people seem to accept today only the altered  (incorrect) meanings.

This incorrect usage is so pervasive that even I, a reasonably dedicated semanticist, have been guilty of glibly utilizing the terms in a wrong way in some of my own writings.  In expounding upon my own coined expression devised to proclaim my separation from the whole shootin' match, I stated this:  Rather than calling myself an atheist, saying there is no god, or an agnostic, saying I don't know; I prefer my own term of theo-neutralist, meaning I don't know and I don't care.  So I perhaps got across my point of introducing a clearer personal label into the mix - clarifying my detachment - but in the effort, I misused the original word atheist in the way it is typically abused.  My apologies for that.

Atheist merely means not theist - not believing in a god.  The fact that over recent decades more and more people are stepping up to proclaim atheism as a way of life has begun to set and harden the altered meaning.  That's apparently because many of the new (zealous?) atheists are declaring that religion is doing little if any good for humanity and is usually harmful.  (I often make this case myself, and I believe it to be true of religion, whether or not there may be some invisible supreme being.)  These bold folks have inadvertently assisted in the drift of the term atheist from meaning no belief to meaning belief against.  While I applaud the effort as well as the fortitude to fight the uphill battle against entrenched belief systems, it probably would be better had the struggle started from a more sure footing by first establishing a positive meme rather than standing firmly on being not something else.  That approach eventually worked for protestants - those whose only basis for a label was their protesting against Catholicism - but the protest itself was more of a positive movement and was not as weak as merely saying I am acatholic.  That one probably would never have worked at all. 

The folks who call themselves Brights have an interesting approach.  Choosing to seek out a word that was not based on the negative - non-theist, a-theist, non-believer - they eventually landed upon the term bright, used as a noun, not intending to claim more brightness of mind or some special relationship to the sun perhaps, but meaning a positive position on life and a sound approach to the naturalistic worldview.  These folks express a bright outlook on what is and what can be understood rather than allowing themselves to be known for a lack of belief in the supernatural and mythological.  There is no way to tell yet whether this Bright meme will catch on significantly in the larger world, but it is rapidly growing as an online constituency of folks who share a positive, naturalistic view and want to see more civic accomplishment that is not guided and/or hampered by traditional religious views.

So to sum up, my simple reason for not using the atheist label is based on these two points: 1.) Just as Wikipedia reveals, the term no longer is accepted to mean merely not believing; common usage has made it a more militant belief against.  2.) My desire is to stand on a positive platform rather than just being someone who does not believe something many others believe.  My atheism is not my public persona. 

I am a Bright, I am a Humanist, I am a freethinker.  I love humanity but hate what humanity has done to itself through beliefs, most of which are strictly based in superstition and fear.