Sort of a retraction...

So this is sort of embarrassing, but as it turns out I am an atheist, I just didn't know it. Yeah, really. In fact I have been an atheist for a very long time, I just wasn't aware of it. How is this possible? Allow me to quote YouTube user AronRa: "Atheist does not mean that you reject the possibility of a god," and "The only thing that defines an atheist is that you are not convinced that there must be a god." I am not convinced.

What's more amusing to me is that I wrote AronRa an email to thank him for helping me figure this out and he actually responded that it was his intention to share this story at future atheist meetings and conventions. That is, I think, freaking hilarious.

In further researching this it turns out that Greta Christina had something similar to say about atheism. "For me, and for the overwhelming majority of atheists I know, our atheism is a provisional conclusion, based on careful reasoning and on the best available evidence we have. Our atheism is the conclusion that the God hypothesis is unsupported by any good evidence, and that unless we see better evidence, we're going to assume that God does not exist. If we see better evidence, we'll change our minds."

Seems that what I though atheism was isn't what atheism is. I thought that atheism is the belief that there is no god, and that is apparently the general belief. Instead atheism is the lack of a belief in god. A bit of a quibble, but it shoots the "is atheism a belief?" question right in the face. I don't believe there is no god, I lack the belief that there is a god. If you could give me indisputable evidence that god existed tomorrow, I'd change my mind. Even Richard Dawkins, Dark Lord of the Atheists, said that on a scale of 1 being an absolute certainty that there is a god and 7 being absolute certainty that there is not a god that he was at a 6.

Granted, if you did give me that evidence, you'd still have to work to make me care much, so even though my atheism might change, my apatheism probably wouldn't. And, yes, it's possible to be both. It's possible to be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time as well apparently.

So what does this change? In many ways, not much. I think the same things I thought before this revelation. But in some ways, huge changes. I used to be pissed off because the Pledge of Allegiance (yes I will not shut up about this) was an insult to a group I cared about but didn't consider myself to be a part of; now the Pledge is an insult to me. Every time I see "In God we trust" on a coin or dolla bill, it's me that's devalued. I'm as patriotic as the next guy. I'm more patriotic than the next guy. But because I lack a belief that some people have I'm looked down on, considered unelectable, and untrustworthy?

In some ways I'm the same guy. In others I now burn with an anger I didn't feel before. I may be the same shouty, opinionated, arrogant, patriotic, pro underdog guy as before, but it's different now... Now I am the underdog.