Sad Little Atheists*

This is part of the reason why I no longer take part in the Atheist community.

PZ Meyers, bless his childish little heart, was bored with himself and decided to have at that popular Atheist/Skeptic pastime - poking 'the Woo' with a blunt instrument.

Anyone can affirm that I really was a heavily skeptical Atheist not so long ago by looking at the other blog I'm a team member on, and seeing for yourself how patronising, condescending and fond of ridicule I was at that point.

Talk about an inferiority complex. It has been my experience that many people, upon first realising how much of religion is popularly-accepted obfuscation, go into overdrive in their resentment, and strike back from the high intellectual ground we sometimes perceive scientists and Atheists to inhabit.

But it's a no-go, I'm afraid. After a few years I realised that my Atheist stance was actually in direct contradiction to many of my personal experiences. I could trust materialism and the word of science that there is nothing more to this universe than what can be extracted through observation, or I could trust myself. Despite not always being wise, or clever, or good, I went with myself in the end.

Fortunately, I'm no longer likely to participate in herd-voting for the sake of annoying the Woo; neither am I likely to use condescending language to someone who has had different experiences to myself. Or make blanket statements like the cult followers of James Randi are fond of using.And frankly, I'm finding the Skeptical community to be possessed of all the maturity of angst-ridden teenagers. They don't 'make me cry' - they make me just a little sad. But perhaps it's somewhere many of us have to go - an exploration of complete denial - before we come back to our real Selves again.

* Update. That title isn't meant as a blunt instrument for bashing Atheists, either- particularly as I'm considered an Atheist myself, by most religious folk.
My present stance is that yes, god/the gods exist, but we created them . ('We' being humans, nonhumans, grass, trees, rocks, subatomic molecules and All). This doesn't mean they don't exist - quite the contrary.