Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/"No such thing as atheists."/reply (10)

To quote Liz Feldman "It's very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or, as I like to call it: 'marriage.' You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not gay lunch. I parked my car; I didn't gay park it."

Now, the thing about atheism that does set it apart is that "what religion are you?" often comes before "are you religious?" when conversation sparks. Regardless whether you are constantly thinking about it - and with Religious Right news constantly filling out Facebook feeds and WIGO pages, we probably have little choice in that matter - you're still an explicit atheist in a broad sense. There's nothing you can do to really change that - even if, indeed, you don't go around constantly applying this non-belief to things. It may well be "atheism is to religion as as bald is to hair colour", but what if a) everyone assumed you weren't bald until you pointed it out or b) if people didn't treat it like hair colour, but skin colour, which doesn't posses the "don't have one" as an option. That's really the sort of world the "atheist" label has grown up in.

Anyway, here's Mr Universe himself on the subject. Though notably I differ on his opinion about agnosticism: I think "atheist" is the more useful term than "agnostic" because I don't posses that belief, so "atheist" describes that, whereas "agnostic" conveys too much faux open-mindedness. But the point about the label conveying too much extra baggage is spot on. But that's the issue with all labels. We label people gay; does that mean they're going to be well-groomed and into fashion and dancing the YMCA?