The Value of an Atheistic Self-Identity

In my last couple of posts I've discussed my early self-identification as an atheist. The truth is that I sustained that self-identification through most of my life. It has only really been in the last few years that I have felt an interest in a different religious identity and I am still very much in the process of sorting that change out. But the atheist identity worked for me for quite a long time. Obviously there were some virtues in it and things about that identity that I liked.

First, and most obvious, it worked for me in the sense that it reflected much better than any other religious description I knew about, what I actually believe. Once atheism became defined for me as a reaction to the conservative protestant Christianity of the Midwest it became a sane island in what often seemed to me to be a sea of absurdity in the Midwest. Some things just seemed obvious to me from the start. That the Bible was written by human beings and that all books written by human beings are fallible, for example. The idea that the Bible is "inerrant" was (and is) just a bit silly to me. Such an idea certainly has the advantage of granting authority and power to those who are considered experts in the Bible's interpretation but beyond that it has little use.

Second, I majored in physics in college and did graduate work in astronomy for a while before going to law school, and so the community I was around (physicists and astronomers) was largely atheistic and mostly for the same reasons I was. So self-identification as an atheist helped fit me in a peer group.

Third, there was a lot of bigotry against atheists and so identifying as one gave me the feel of being a bit of an "outlaw." That was kind of fun. I could feel like an outlaw without having to break any laws or do anything immoral. I have always been pretty law-abiding and rule following to the point of usually being considered quite dull. So being an atheist gave me a bit of "spice" so to speak.

Finally, it felt nice to be able to be supportive of the atheist community which was always being attacked. I joined and supported lots of causes when I was a student (like most students do) but although I could call myself a feminist I could not discuss it or approach it from the point of view of the woman, and although I supported gay rights I could only do so from the point of view of a sympathetic heterosexual. As an atheist I could support the rights of a wronged community from the inside.

But, as indicated by the ordering above, the chief reason was that it simply comported with my world view - I didn't believe in miracles, magic, inerrant literature, and infallible leaders. But sometime in my twenties I did start to feel that defining myself against what I didn't believe might not adequately describe me in that it nothing about what I did believe. It was then that I looked around for something else to call myself that would not distance myself from atheism too much but would reflect what I did believe. The first thing I found was "humanism." Next time: the humanist years.