Clarity

The gentle slope from "superChristian" to agnostic to considering paganism to here, at atheism, has for me been an incremental journey of clarification. Again and again, I've had these large and small "Oh, I SEE!" moments. One of the most significant of those moments came some months back when SJ, PraiseNull and I all realized that we were capital-A Atheists. Reading Dawkins (and other authors) and watching his lectures have provided many more OHISEE! moments. And now, we have these conversations I've started up on Facebook.

We never reach a consensus, of course, but as always, typing out my thoughts helps me see what I really think much better. So here are a few things I've solidified in my online talks:

- I think that morality is a natural result of evolution and society; it's easy enough to see that, over time, people must have begun to disapprove of things that they didn't want done to themselves and their kin. The more we all agree not to kill and steal and rape each other, the happier we'll all be.

- I think there are degrees of Christianity, and I tend to dislike people who are less conservative (the Bible is the inerrant word of God, all that stuff actually happened, the Earth is 6,000 years old) and tend to be friends with the more liberal (much of the OT is irrelevant, evolution yah, yay hippie Jesus).

- I have a really hard time ditching my preconceived notion that Atheists are, generally speaking, better educated and more intelligent than religious types.

- I realize that being Atheist doesn't necessarily mean you actually share the same beliefs; it only guarantees that you share one specific disbelief. So I make sure to tell people I debate that I do NOT speak for all Atheists.

- I should probably start calling myself an Atheist-Humanist.

- We watched Religulous last night, and it was better than I'd hoped. It double-solidified this feeling I've had that I can't be a closet Atheist, that I have to talk to people about it.

- I believe that irrationality shouldn't be a virtue; it leads to all kinds of problems. I find it strange that I have to say that, and explain to people why.

That's good for starters...