I may offend some folks with this, but it’s hard to write anything these days to do so. My intent is not to offend but to present my perspective.

I had to explain to someone that there is a difference between anti-theism and atheism itself. It’s tiresome.

Anti-theism is the akin to the political far right of atheism, finding all sorts of things to blame theism for, and with convincing and rational arguments that just don’t work on the religious.

Conversely, the religious arguments against atheism tend to be of a religious nature and only cherry pick logic.

As an atheist, I don’t care enough about religion to debate it, and I understand that for at least some people it’s a source of enjoyment. Can it be misused? Certainly, but so can just about everything else humans do. Take a look around. Once the religious stuff doesn’t adversely impact my life, I don’t care too much. A public holiday is a public holiday.

People talking about being nice to each other is something we could use more of, and if some people require religion for that, that’s fine, but withholding aid to people in a disaster zone unless they join your specific religion is just shitty salesmanship. Bad things happen with anything people are involved in and religion is no different. The same with science and technology.

The arguments on both sides tend to center around everyone wanting people to be nice to each other and fighting over how it should be done.

Now, atheism is more complicated because everyone has their own personal version. In fact, atheism is a complete lack of belief and the only reason there is a name for people who don’t believe in a deity is because the people who need deities needed something to call the others who didn’t. Personally, I prefer being called a heretic. It conjures in my mind some guy living in a cave somewhere with a rabbit bone in his beard, dancing around a fire just for the joy of it.

My version of atheism is just being awed by the world around me without the need to blame anyone or anything for it. When you drill down into the finest details of everything we know about everything around us on the planet, from plants to fungi to the thinking meatbags we thing we are, it’s simply astounding that it all exists. This is the platform from which many people’s faith springs, and I applaud them on that. I, however, understand – even believe – that we’re just an accident in a universe of accidents.

We would like to know why we’re here, but it’s peculiar that’s not the first question a baby asks. We’re sensory creatures, social creatures, and our first questions are not about the universe but on what’s practical for us. No child says, “I’d like to know about all this God business”, instead, they are sort of put on a path based mainly on geography for better and worse. I was thrown into various religions as a child and came away fairly unscathed, with no ill feelings toward the religions – but a little scared by the bad things people who are religious will do in the name of their deity of choice.

Me? I have come to an understanding with the universe which is as lopsided as everyone else’s. When I view the world, I view it as a tourist because, in the end, that’s what I am.

All the beauty, all the ugly, everything combined showing just how complicated a single world is, with we earth bound misfits constantly stretching the bounds of our knowledge through science and technology. To date, no one I know has prayed and received a better algorithm for anything, but it might happen. Who knows?

But please, don’t try to tell me that science is evil while using an app on a cellphone whose signal is bouncing off the earth through satellites, powered by harnessed electrons finding their way to ground through our mazes, as you type on a device containing very rare elements on Earth.