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My mother asked me if I was an atheist when I moved away from Christianity.ASoon after I made the break, after 25 years of slowly increasing cognitive dissonance, I looked into other brands of religion and found that they are all basically the same—everybody trying to prove they believe in only one God whom we can only contact if we make our checks payable to a select group of men and organizations. Add to that the mysogyny I found in all manner of holy writ and I figured religion just wan't for me.
But does that make me an atheist? I've had experiences in my life that I cannot with any measure of logic dismiss as mere coincidence. Case in point: I'm listening to my Windows Media player that has over 300 songs playing at random. I walk a friend to his car and it's raining. When I come back inside, the song "In the Rain" is playing. You knw the saying: if it happens once, it's an accident. If it happens twice, it's a coincidence. If it happens thrice, it's a pattern. I've had similar experiences much more than 3 times. I don't feel enjoined to attribute these experiences to any specific deity since they lend themselves to fifty million different ways they could be interpreted. A supernatural beings? Aliens from a parallel universe trying to make contact? Mind over matter? Could my mental energy be so strong that I can make a song play simply by thinking about it? I've been left on my own with no empirical means to determine what's what. I could easily rule out the possibilty of the Christian god because the biblical creation story bears not the slightest resemblance to the universe in which we live and it's no jump to conclude that the biblical creator is as fictitious as the world he created. Yet, the possibility of a spiritual explanation for my experiences remains up in the air. So how can I call myself an atheist?
My problem is that I have no conside definition for the word "atheist." Some atheists define atheism as not believing in God. Nothing more and nothing less.This isn't the answer that ends all questions for me. We recognize a difference between theism and deism. Yet, I've never heard of a adeist. Instead, atheism is used as a catch-all term that includes everything outside the physical universe.
By that definition, I guess I'm not an atheist. But if I define athist with an emphasis on "theist." then I probably am. I guess I answered my own question. still, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
Hi Rhonda, from the UK! Start an Intro thread and we can sit down for a cuppa
It seems you've accepted the 'binary' definition of atheism so hopefully you can now see that there's no instruction as to why you might not believe in deities. Some disbelieve because they're rational skeptics; some disbelieve because they were raised with no theistic indoctrination; some disbelieve because they have a different religious belief (e.g. some buddhists & pagans). 'Atheism' can't help you deal with any other subject of belief. Atheists can (and do!) believe in all kinds of nonsense, from aliens to conspiracy theories to extreme right/left-wing politics. It all boils down to your personal interpretation of evidence: if a situation satisfies its burden of proof enough for you to accept it, you'll likely believe it. So you think that there's more to 'coincidence' than the word suggests, a 'spiritual' aspect, due to your personal experiences? Fair enough. As long as you remember that personal experience is only 'evidence' to you and you don't blind yourself to evidence which might refute your belief, you probably won't annoy anyone else with it
from the UK! Start an Intro thread and we can sit down for a cuppa 
