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I'm an atheist, not an agnostic

• Richard Evans Lee , • Skeptics & Atheists

I called myself an agnostic for a very long time. One day I decided that if there were some sort of conscious First Cause or motivator behind the whole shebang there wasn't any reason to think it might have any remote relationship to any theistic conception arrived at by human beings. The odds of a thousand guesses out of trillions of possibilities or something like that. I felt that it wasn't that I merely did not know but that any theist conception that I might ever encounter had the chance of being accurate best expressed by 1 divided by a transfinite number. So my atheism is more an expression of what I think of theism than the universe.

As you can imagine my view of why people need to believe greatly colors this. I'm too used to the idea of an indifferent universe to feel sympathy for people scared by the idea. And I'd like to live forever myself. Hopefully in place with more plausible pavement than gold and not surrounded by the most ignorant people ever born. But believing in the Heavenly Fairy because you are afraid to die is letting the will to survive get out of hand.

[Listening to: Everybody's Sombody's Fool - Aretha Franklin - (4:35)]

Richard Evans Lee
November 14, 2003 •
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You knew I would be here to post. I definately understand your position here. The idea that we can arrive at the right First Cause seems astounding, but what if that First Cause revealed himself to mankind. Can you fathom any notion that this First Cause is God and that he would reveal his nature to us? I used to be an agnostic in my younger days and I didn't arrive at the idea of God because I feared death. I decided that I wanted to find truth. I wanted to see if Objective reality existed beyond my relationship to the world. I looked at the world through the eyes of the broken and spent 13 years searching and reading. It was no overnight conversion and it certainly wasn't some emotional draw. God found me and I began to respond to his call and the journey still isn't over. I can see your side and I have argued for the Atheistic position in the past, but the evidence for God stacks up like evidence in the OJ case. It is there to be argued and studied, but in the end it is an individual decision. God isn't a Heavenly fairy, but the tale is yet to written. I sit here thinking about the struggles that you have been through and what my friends have endured in their lives and I weep. I don't know you, but I do care how your life turns out.

Posted by: Kannibal | November 18, 2003 1:13 AM

Many, many years ago I had the patience to debate (in the friendly sense) my worldview with Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, even members of oddball cults. Aside from supernatural intervention I don't really see myself changing the essentials of how I view the universe. This email to a kindly Christian woman currently stands as the closest thing I've written to a definitive response to Christians who may wonder about my attitude towards contemporary American Christianity: Christians kind and homophobic.

Posted by: Richard Evans Lee | November 18, 2003 6:41 AM

How do you feel?

Feel free to share your feelings about I'm an atheist, not an agnostic. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted. This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard

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I'm an atheist, not an agnostic
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