When I became an atheist, to be honest, I really didn’t know any other non-believers. Or so I thought. As a few years went by, I discovered, even in my little town, that I was not completely alone in my disbelief. The difference was I was not afraid to talk about being an atheist to those believers, anxious to be the one to have me come back to Jesus. I can’t be certain that people knowing I am an atheist didn’t hurt me either professionally or socially, but I never feared about my job and as far as friends or colleagues were concerned, if me being an atheist repel you to the point you can’t be around me? Good for me.

Sometimes, people are just silly. We all know that and sometimes that silliness comes int the public square and actually, for a minute, becomes news. Today’s silliness has to do woth the White House Press Secretary’s wearing of a Christian cross necklace during press conferences. What? Would their be a complaint if it were the Str of David? How about the Hammer of Thor? See how this sounds? Even an atheist (me) can see the idiocy of that.

Would it surprise you to k ow that I, an atheist, am interested in religious belief? Many of us are, even those of us that left belief . Why? I can’t speak for anyone but myself but I am curious about the history and culture of these beliefs. Christianity, the belief I left, has an unusual history and culture. If you’re wiling to dig into your specific belief system, and expose the bones, you might find out something really interesting or even challenging to your beliefs.

In case you’ve been visiting here and are unaware, I’m an atheist. Yes, I am one of those, although I’m unsure what anyone means when they refer to me that way. If you’ve perused my archives, you’ll see a lot of posts concerning atheism, many about that those of us that will say publicly that we are atheists (around 10% of the US population) are just like anyone else in that we have families, careers, and yes, friends. What some of us used to say was that we were just like you, we just believed in one fewer god that you. Cute, huh? It didn’t really make any friends and rarely was cause for much discussion with non-atheists, but hey, we tried. Personally, I was never evangelical concerning my non-belief. I never attempted to convince anyone else that my way was the right one and theirs, Christian, Muslim, Judaism, etc., was wrong.

It doesn’t seem that long ago, at least to me, when atheism was in the news and controversial, at least in some people’s eyes. Today, it appears to have completely vanished from the social conversation completely. Is that for the good or not? Does it really matter that atheism remain in the spotlight and contentious with mainstream society? Well, aren’t we, atheists, part of mainstream society? If not, how not?