I don’t pretend to speak for anyone but myself so I want to say, as an atheist, that I don’t care what you think about me being an atheist. I can say I know others that believe the same, but it’s far from bring representative of all atheists around the world. I’m sure there are some atheists, just like anybody, that care a lot about what others think about them and work to make sure they are in the liked category among their peers.

For some reason, people of faith like to believe that they can say anything they want about atheists and that just because they said it, it would be true. For instance, no, atheists do not worship Satan. I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard that but hey, please go look up the definition of atheist. I think that might include, without saying, the supernatural in general. That would include any afterlife. Most atheists I am aware of do not believe there is anything after death. That makes it simple doesn’t it? You can send your time doing good if that’s what you want, without having to worry about any judgement after death. Of course that applies to people that do bad things as well. I think all this shows is that with or without a belief in a god or gods, people are going to be who they are.

That’s what being an atheist means to me: just being myself without any thought about a reward or punishment for not being me. What do I mean by that? We’ve all seen them, right? The Sunday-go-to-church, sit-in-the-front-pew types that make sure everyone sees them and probably believes they are a Great Christian. Maybe he or she is involved in the church administration or part of the pastor’s inner circle of elite worshippers (okay, I made that up, but it does exist in one form or another. I know for a fact).

Some believers actually think that we atheists are part of some cult. It’s true. I’ve been confronted as some sort of cultist but the person could never define the cult specifically to me. A cult of non-believers? How about a cult that deified some itenerit teacher in a far off Roman province 2,000 years ago because that’s exactly what the Jews thought of what later would be known as christians – a Jewish cult – and they were not looked upon well . I think that holds even today. Christians go out of their way to show affection for Jews but reverse never happens. Why? Well, even though it’s almost 1.5 billion strong, it’s still some sort of weird cult. Well, cults (40,000 versions).

And please stop calling it New Atheism, because it’s not. Name one thing in the definition of an atheist that’s new. You can’t. You can stack a lot of other things into it, but then it’s no longer atheism. It’s something else. At one time, some dared to call it “Atheist Plus”, which just shoveled a lot of social justice crap into the atheist world. It didn’t work out well. That doesn’t mean you cannot be a humanist if your an atheist, but humanism is something different that non-belief in god(s).

Me? I’m just the plain ol’ atheist that’s been around forever. Whatever else I choose to do with my time has nothing to do with that single fact. So I can be out loud about it without fear of being hypocritical. And I definitely do not care what others think about me.