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We label everything and ourselves. It's what we do. It's why we have separate rooms in our homes. It's why our license plates have our states on them. It's why we name our children. We label.
Labeling isn't always a bad thing. It allows us with one word to identify ourselves with a group to which we claim to belong. Many people identify themselves by what they are not.
I am not a racist. I am not a Christian. By labeling ourselves by what we are not, we are intentionally disassociating ourselves from groups we do not want to be part of. For some of us, denying a label is a more powerful statement than accepting one. And really, for atheists, there is no word that describes us that isn't an antonym of theist.
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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
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