Atheism is just saying what you do NOT believe.

The God word is just a game of semantics.

So is Atheism.

Atheism is stating what you do not believe in.

If you don't believe in the Christian God, or the Jewish God, or somebody else’s God, then you are an atheist relative to that dogma.

We are all atheists, including Christians, because there are many Gods they do not believe in.

'Atheist', 'God', these are just words. To have a real debate you need to stop assuming that there is some Universally shared meaning to these words; especially when it is quite obvious there is not.

There are almost as many definitions for God as there are people in the world. Like snowflakes no two people believe exactly the same thing about what these three letters 'G' 'O' 'D' represent.
So, instead of wasting your time being an atheist, start spending your time stating what you *DO* believe.

Chances are, you believe quite a few things definitively. Take all of the things you do believe in and then, smack, call it GOD.

Suddenly, you have found a meaningful personal definition for the three letters 'G' 'O' 'D'.

I used to spend a lot of time being a negative atheist (meaning I would shout down the definitions of 'G' 'O' 'D' that I did not believe in and, in the process, coming off as mean spirited, angry, and a generally negative person.)

It was only when I came to terms with exactly what I *do* believe in that I gained a proper sense of perspective.

Most of this stemmed from my wanting to join the Freemasons. I was told that I had to profess a belief in 'God' to become a Freemason. Considering I am founder of AARM (a supposed 'atheist' website) and have been described in the past as one of the top Internet infidels on some web search engines, I thought this might present a problem.

But, you see, the neat thing about the Freemasons is they do not require that you *define* or *conform* to a specific belief or dogma about God. They merely require that you profess a belief in personal God that you can comfortably refer to as the 'Great Architect of the Universe'.

Now, last I checked, I tend to believe in the Universe. And, I also believe that the Universe is 'first cause' (meaning I do not believe that some imaginary external entity 'created' the Universe but, rather, the Universe itself *is* creation, first cause, and worthy of respect, adoration, and unabiding love).

I am not, today, a material reductionist simply because our current best understanding of the nature of reality, through the scientific method, has demonstrated that the Universe is not inherently comprised of material 'things', but rather waves of probability in hyperspace which are unfolded from the implicate order into the explicate by virtue of our experience as filtered through our central nervous system. Our experience creates time, space, and unfolds reality into its infinite permutations and variety.

At one time, when I called myself an atheist (really meaning that at the time I was a material reductionist) I would grant that the Universe was the creator of all things but I would hardly consider it 'self aware' or 'intelligent'.

At a certain moment I came to the self realization of a stunning hypocrisy in my statement. Here I am, allegedly a collection of molecules and atoms produced through random chance, being self-aware and driven by deep intellectual desire to 'know' the meaning, purpose, and truth of Universe yet failing to ascribe the same possibility to my creator! How absurd. Through simple set theory alone the Universe is self-aware and intelligent by virtue of the simple fact that I am a part of the Universe and I am also self-aware and intelligent.

There is one piece of ritual in Freemasonry that hits at the heart of the matter for me. It is when it stated that "There is a divine spark in man that bears a striking affinity to the supreme intelligence of the Universe..."

I now feel that it is no co-incidence that I am a self-aware consciousness within Universe who finds himself deeply compelled to understand the creation itself. When I realize that this quest is, in essence, an effort to understand myself is when I reach something closer to enlightenment.
Surprisingly, even within Christianity, these ideas have some traction. You simply have to look at the parts of the Bible that were thrown out at the Nicea council (the Gnostic Gospels) and ignore the stuff that was kept in to control mankind (Pauline Christianity).

In knowing oneself one finds God and by finding God you find the Universe and Creation.

We are all connected, top to bottom, beginning to end, alpha and omega, throughout all of time and space. This temporal and hyper sensual experience we are allowed by letting our central nervous systems filter the signals of the implicate order to unfold the daily experience of our lives is a rare gift that we each should treasure.

For God so loved the world he created the quantum uncertainty principle.

God was in agony listening to the infinite possibilities of creation within it before it burst forth into the Big Bang allowing for the grand theatrical stage we experience in an infinite variety of creative expression.

We are all co-creators, co-experiencers, and we are each individual pieces of the God that comprises the whole.

Do not search for God 'out there' when you can find God within yourself.

We are too hung up on words, definitions, and semantics.

Don't state what you do *not* believe in (atheism) say what the heck you *do* believe in and then call that 'God'. No one has the right to deny you that.