Friendly Humanist

Both Luke at Common Sense Atheism and Sabio at Triangulations have presented taxonomic breakdowns of the sort of differences one finds between atheists.  I thought it might be worth laying out my own position.  See their blog posts for some of the other alternatives in these categories.  I have not used all of their categories, but the following covers the most important points:

Self-labels:

I’ve discussed some of these before.  I prefer to call myself a humanist.  I am also an atheist, agnostic, skeptic, and freethinker.

Level of certainty:

On Dawkins’ scale of 1 (strong belief in a god or gods) to 7 (strong belief in no god), I generally fall around 4.  For most specific claims that I’ve heard made by particular religions, I fall closer to 6 or 7.

Level of affirmation:

I am an implicit (or “weak” or “negative”) atheist:  I withhold belief in the apparent absence of evidence.  I do not assert that there is no god; I simply decline to assert that there is a god.

Scope:

Broad – I apply the same lack of belief to all god-claims I have encountered.

Openness:

I am open about my beliefs, though I am cautious around new acquaintances and certain family members.  I am (obviously) quite open online.

Degree of action:

I affirm my beliefs, I blog about them, and I donate to humanist-themed charities.

Degree of enchantment:

I am a very enchanted naturalist.  I find the natural world (including all of us) to be a truly wonderful place, and am delighted to have some time to experience it and grow to understand it.

Mystical inclination:

I am somewhat mystical, as I understand the term.  Although I enjoy knowing and understanding things, I find a certain amount of delight in thinking about things that my understanding doesn’t (or cannot) penetrate.

Non-theistic leanings:

I incline to believe in an entirely natural universe, with no transcendent personal nature (no god or ur-consciousness).  I am flatly agnostic on the question of a prime mover (the deists’ god).

View of reason:

Reason is the discipline that most reliably allows our deeply-held values to be expressed in effective action.  It is indispensible for leading a fully authentic life.

Faith items:

In the absence of proof (or even the possibility of proof in principle), I believe that my perceptions are caused by real objects and events.  I believe that the past is a generally-reliable guide to the future.

Stance toward religion:

I am relatively indifferent toward beliefs.  Though I am often curious what people believe and why, I am rarely inclined to condemn beliefs in themselves.  As for religiously-motivated actions, I respond to on their individual merits (as I do actions in general).

Religious participation:

I attend a weekly Unitarian service.  I sing along to most of the hymns.  Is that religious participation?  Not to me, though I guess that largely depends how widely you define religion.

Belief history:

I am a lifelong non-believer.  I’ve “tried out” Paganism, Mormonism, and more mainline Christianity.  That is, I have explored them as different ways of approaching the world, and dipped my toe in the practices associated with each.  But I never adopted the beliefs though (so far as I can recall).

Theory of religion:

I am far from certain about this, and am content to leave explanations to those who study it more rigorously (sociologists and psychologists, that is, not theologians).  From what I understand of their findings, I suspect that the existence of religion in the apparent absence of supernatural reality is due to some combination of adaptive cognitive biases and historical accident.

Degree of secular superstitious thinking:

I have bad habits, and habits that are not harmful but are not grounded in reason, but I don’t know of any that could be called superstitious.

Summary:

I hope that this has helped to clarify some of my positions, and perhaps further elucidate what I mean when I call myself an atheist.  As with any such declaration, I reserve the right to change my mind about things as I learn more about myself and about the universe around me.

How about you?  How would you fill in the above categories?

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