[mindcrime]

I never had much religious faith to begin with, despite growing up in the Bible Belt and having some devoutly religious family members. I was just sort of always a natural skeptic, and somebody who was drawn to the hard sciences, and wanted to see, feel, hear, measure, test, experiment, etc. before believing things. Nothing about religious beliefs really checked any of those boxes for me.

I spent most of the time from my mid-teens (give or take a bit) to sometime in my 30's referring to myself as agnostic or maybe "weak atheist" since I can't prove there is no deity / deities. And a very slight thought that there was some merit to the "irreducible complexity" argument also weighed on that. Then I read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and that satisfied me that the "irreducible complexity" argument doesn't hold up. Since then I've generally referred to myself as an atheist if asked about my religious beliefs. In some contexts I might say "non believer" or just defer from answering, to avoid starting arguments.

[BLKNSLVR]

The whole 'agnostic' versus 'atheist' thing is interesting, and to some extent feels like a way to reduce atheism. The semantic game of 'I don't believe in god' versus 'I believe there is no god', "see, you believe in something you can't prove too!"

"Burden of proof turned upon non-believers" as per Tool's 10,000 Days (Wings for Marie Part 2).

I quite like Stephen F. Roberts' "I just believe in one less god than you".

[mindcrime]

> I quite like Stephen F. Roberts' "I just believe in one less god than you".

Agreed, and I've become rather fond of using that line of discussion over the years.