I can imagine that average, moderate Christians get annoyed with Super Freaky Christians. And, by Super Freaky, I mean--the ones that give Christians a bad name. The ones that seem to be Christian out of a sense of wrath towards the unbeliever, instead of out of a love a Christ. And, I can imagine that moderate Christians don't want to be annoyed with Super Freaky Christians, as they must assume that, with few exceptions, Super Freaks are coming from a place that's misguided, but likely well-intentioned.

And, so, in the spirit of bridge building, I'll let out a secret--I feel the same way about militant Atheists. There are some atheists that figured out--"Hey! I don't believe." And, they leave it at that. Then, there are some atheists that go about on Proving Missions. They just wish that they could somehow enlighten the uneducated masses. They can't understand why so many cling to 'fairy tales.'? They presume that others are too psychologically conditioned to see the beauty of a Universe without God, and they are too intellectually weak to seek "objective" truth. Granted, as we share atheism, I don't want to be annoyed with those types. I get that they're on a mission of sorts. But, on occasion, I simply am annoyed.

This is one of those occasions.

So, I'll settle down to contemplating a question I found an a 'hard-core'? atheist's site, one which I think he actually wanted answered:

But when I tear away all the indignation and baffling extremist pseudo-counter-arguments which surround my non-theism, reanalyze all the arguments and all the evidence, I'm left with a straightforward fact: I am simply not convinced. So why are you and a vast majority of the world different from me?? And don't mistake that sentence to imply that everyone else in the world shouldn't be different from me, I just want to know why, what kernel of thought precedes a life consisting of a theistic mind frame?

A bit loaded, ain't it?

I am simply not convinced.

Looking at that sentence:

Convinced. As if he needs convincing. In other words--Prove it.

I, not being quite so demanding my atheism, do not request things like that. Why? You guessed it! Science. Science dictates that you cannot prove anything ultimately. You can disprove all day long. But, thanks to Schroedinger's cat, to observe is to change, and to not observe is to not have absolute proof. So, if you are a scientist that "is simply not convinced" then, technically, you are simply a scientist.

I do not need convincing. I do not throw that gauntlet down. I do not say "Prove it," and then hide behind science which claims that nothing can be proved. That hardly seems fair.

I simply don't see Him/Her/It. When I look, God simply isn't there.

Some women here have talked about spiritual paths.

I am not a fallen theist. I never went to Sunday school. I never had that moment where I thought, "Ha! Lies! They are are lying to me!" So, maybe that's why I'm not bitter about it.

My concrete memories start at about 3 years old. That's 1982. In 1981, my little sister died of SIDS.

Now, several part of my personality can be traced back to that event, and my atheism is one of them. My mom, angry about her dead baby, hated God. She hated Him upon Erica's death, and shortly thereafter, denounced God as fantasy.

Subsequently, at an age where I asked such questions, ours was a house where my questions didn't get the usual answers. Mom said she didn't believe. My Grandmother said that she was just pissed at God, and denying him/her (Nanny is best described as Pagan). My other Grandparents wanted me to believe, in not just God, but Jesus and the whole of Christianity.

So, I, at a very, very young age, was Agnostic. Even at 5, I claimed I didn't know.

There's tremendous pressure in this country to believe. And, kids don't want to be different. I was already so very, very different as a child--living in a Middle Eastern/American household, having a one-legged little brother, not being able to tell people what my mother did for a living... a million things.

So, I went looking. I wanted to believe. Very much. I wanted to be "normal." I wanted to have faith. I wanted God. I wanted to not feel like I was lying when I prayed.

But, it always felt like lying.

Two experiences swore me off Christianity. Our house burned down when I was 7; we received clothes and bedding and all sort of things from a generous Baptist church about four blocks away. But, (hey, it's Texas) the Baptist church two blocks away refused publicly, and condemned the charity of the other church. Why? Hussein might have been Muslim--the unbeliever, the infidel. (He was, in fact, a lapsed Muslim, and is now a devout Christian.) At 7, though, when fairness in the world is paramount--I realized that fairness didn't come into play at church. That the love of Jesus for little children apparently wasn't as unconditional as I'd been told.

Three years later I learned about "The Rapture." A little girl in my 5th grade class told me that Jesus would come save all the believers, and leave the rest to the Anti-Christ. She told me that good Christians anxiously awaited Christ's return, and I should come to Church with her to be "saved." I will never be a Christian, because of that conversation at age 10. I cried at the ghastliness of it--all those people waiting for others to be tortured, and the girl called me a Satanist, and didn't talk to me again.

That incident led to a conversation with my Mom. She said that she couldn't tell me what to think. I had to find my own way.

And, in middle school I looked elsewhere. I took out books from the library. I read the Koran. I read about Judaism. Mom, relationship with God mended, was now exploring Wicca with my grandmother, so I checked that out, too.

No matter what name you gave God. My prayers would still be lies. And, I knew it.

I looked into Hinduism. Breaking God into aspects of a whole didn't solve my problem.

I started college as a enthusiastic Physics major, and spent two years with that department. I can't say that wasn't part of my search.

My freshman English professor assigned an essay as our final. The topic--"What is truth? Is truth God?"

I still have that paper. I was terrified when I turned it in, and stuck a post-it note to it, saying that I didn't mean for it to be offensive--to please not hold it against me if she didn't agree. The truth was that I couldn't absolutely believe in God, and if I couldn't believe whole-heartedly, why bother? What God would want someone who didn't really worship them to do something so insulting as pretend at faith? If God is Truth, then I don't know either.

And, a year later, at 18, I gave up. It was mid summer. I was taking a short session "Wellness Credit" with a fantastically flaky professor, and the topic that day was faith healing.

We all had to get into a "Circle of Wellness" and describe what we thought about faith and health. It was a big class, full of all sorts of people at all sorts of ages.

And, there were some Pentecostals, they said that went into hospitals and "laid hands" for sick people. "They are weak, and we are strong, so we make better vessels, to help God heal. Instead of just their prayers alone," one girl said, blissfully. "It's wonderful to feel God's power come through you."

I didn't get it. Not even a little bit. And, I was sort of angry. And, sort of frustrated. And, I sort of laid out the same arguments I hate'