Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/"No such thing as atheists."/reply (3)

Arguably you have the same thing with "homoseuxality" as an identity. And the same thing with "religious (as opposed to heathen non-believer)" as an identity. Hell, "male" and "female" as an identity can be brought under the same scrutiny. What is it about anything that makes it an "it" worth defining. "Gay" is hardly a nice homogenised group, certainly no more than "atheist" is nice and homogenised as a group. I don't think the core problem is even when you create a group based on a "lack of" a belief. It's more than once you well-known and nicely accepted identities have had their pick at the human race, you're left with some mixed leftovers. And leftovers are rarely homogenous, and usually a bit crappy - you have you bits of burned potato mixed with the ice-cream you didn't scrap off the plate mixed in with the breadcrumbs from the starter and all sat in the remains of some gravy and the vegetables you forgot to serve up along with the slightly overdone scrapings from the pan. Making a club for these left overs - to torture the food analogy further - is like taking them all, putting them in a blender and declaring "look, it's all one food!" I think this is where your awkward feeling stems from (it's at least where my awkward feeling stems from when using the term "atheist") far more than it being a "lack of" anything.