How to categorize myself
In the past few months I’ve run into somewhat of a quandary and it has to do with what to label myself. I would simply call myself an atheist and let it go at that but my wife, who bears some higher hopes for me, thinks of me as a quasi religionist who still believes in the hope that there is a supernatural force out there tied in with the string theory which vibrates all we know and see into being.
But that’s not me I am an avowed Atheist, spelled with a capital A, and proud to be one. I don’t go knocking on peoples doors and hand out leaflets, with pictures of biblical people running around without a leaf covering their privates, but mine would be totally naked, and I would be asking, “Have you been damned?”
No, my Atheism is much more easygoing. The wildest I get is when the Jehovah Witnesses knock on my door and I actually invite them in, to the consternation of my wife, and I proceed to baffle them with my knowledge of their holy book, which amounts to 5 or 6 well rehearsed verses which I always present as paraphrases so as to put them in a relaxed mood. They will immediately, and I mean immediately, pull out their bibles to give me the correct version. By this time I hit them with a couple of questions which they don’t usually have to deal with. “Remember the rainbow that god put in the sky, after Noah got his ark parked, as a sign that he would never visit this kind of catastrophe upon mankind again?” there will be rustling of leaves as they try to find the correct passage. When they come to it I will ask them just a simple question. “So there was no refraction of light before that time?” Their reply is apathetically, “We’ll have to get back to you on that.“ My next question should have been a softball. “If Jesus went by himself into the desert for 40 days, who wrote the account?“ they’ll come back to me on that. There hasn’t been a time yet that they’ve come back with the answer, even though they said they would, and I’ve been patiently waiting!
But I’ve regressed. I started out with the proposition, ’What to call myself.” So as a reference point I went back to what my parents were. They were ‘Devout’ Catholics. Now, try as I might I cannot see myself as a devout Atheist. It just doesn’t work. I have friends who are ‘Practicing’ Protestants, again how do you practice Atheism, go to Non-bible study? I guess that just leaves me with one choice. I am an AVOWED Atheist. I don’t pass any pamphlets, I don’t get in your face, I love EVERYONE in this world and my only message is the way I live.