I have often worried about the word “atheist”. It feels like the most honest label if you need to give me one. But is it really so important? In a discussion between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michael Shermer, they seem to congratulate each other for having used other words to describe themselves: non-believer or agnostic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4clB0yqarE
(See 26:30 – 28:00 and 32:53-33:54)
This quote from Isaac Asimov works better for me.
“I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.” – Isaac Asimov
http://www.eloquentatheist.com/quotes/literary-atheists-a-to-b-quotes/
