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Originally Posted by JumpinJesus
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 think 'nothing' when it comes to the question of religious preference describes an atheist quite well, actually.
I am not talking about labeling as a concept. I am talking about the label of atheism. I do not believe in theistic entities, but to label myself as not a non-believer in theistic entities, in my mind, only lends strength to the concept that there could be theistic entities because I am taking a stand against something that I purport doesn't exist. It seems...inessential to my own definition of my beliefs. Unlike racism, why would I define myself in relation to something that I don't believe has a shred of existence in my world?
I understand that, perhaps, this need is related to the preponderance of religious belief out in the world and there was a time in my own life when I more closely identified with the concept of atheism. Then I dabbled with agnosticism for a while. But recently, I have just let go of all of it. I am not a theist, I am not an atheist, I am not an agnostic, I am nothing. And it's quiet here.
