what makes you an atheist? (part 3)

what makes you an atheist? (part 3)

some more personal thoughts about atheism...

when someone asks, "what religion are you?", my response, for as long as i can remember, has been "None, I suppose" or "technically, I'm supposed to be a Roman Catholic" or something like that. But once when somebody asked what religion i was, and i did the usual "i don't really believe" thing, but then they said, "so you're an atheist!" ... i said, "what's that?"... "someone who doesn't believe in god" ... "oh? there's a name for that?"

I was surprised that a lack of belief was given a label!

"atheism is a religion in much the same way that bald is a hair colour" ..

does a lack of doing something automatically mean you are doing something else?

For me, i just did not believe any more, I am not even sure I actually did "Believe" in the first place either, so i didn't exactly become an atheist. it's what I was by default without the silly religion in the first place, it was my religious state of being that I took for granted without giving it a label. And I never really have made an affirmation to myself and say, "I'm an atheist", all I've ever told myself was that "I am me" ...

I realised that I was a non-believer when I noticed that I was no longer concerned that god was watching supposedly everything i was doing, and when I realised this, my first question to myself was, "when did that start happening?"

Which is why I don't technically think of myself as being an atheist today, I didn't set out to be an atheist on purpose, it's just what I seemed to have ended up being, apparently... and what I started off as if I must be technical about it.

in other words, there is nothing you have to actually do to be an atheist, it's more about the things you stop doing, or never did in the first place that makes you an atheist...

again: does not doing something make you into something?

or can somebody name something that can be pointed out or that can be done, that makes someone an atheist?

Can *you* think of a question that can be asked of a potential atheist that they can answer with a simple "yes" that exclusively makes them an atheist? other than the direct question "are you an atheist?"

I actually prefer the term "non-believer" as opposed to atheist. "Heathen Scum" is cool as well, but the term "non-believer" implies that I don't believe in religion and/or I don't believe in god. "Non-believer" also implies (to me at least) that even if there were a god, that the non-believer would still not believe *in* that god anyway.