As a teenager I was that guy you don’t like. Vocal about my right to not believe, not participate, and not be coerced into religious stuff. Quick to anger by what I saw as violations of church/state separation in my public school. Quick to tell folks how wrong and stupid they were stupid for believing it.

Now it makes me cringe. Like you, still Atheist to the core. But I can really appreciate many of my childhood church’s teachings: God is love, God forgives us, God accepts all of us. I can listen in awe at the sermons of Dr. King Jr. And while I cannot imagine ever believing the supernatural aspects of it all, I will always deeply appreciate and agree with the concern and caring for The Least of These, and our shared responsibility to one another.

In the reformed community they have a term for this called being a "cage-stage calvinist." I think it's a useful concept in general. New converts to anything whether it's religion, non-religion, programing paradigms, even superhero fandoms, etc tend to be like that. Especially when those new converts are also young people.

I was like this, while getting my PhD@MIT went to RCIA@Harvard and changed. One thing that helped was realizing that I believe in free will, which is supernatural (and why many leading atheists reject it). Since belief in free will is an act of faith, it opened my eyes and the world gained color.

That’s interesting. Why is free will an act of faith?

(I’m not saying it isn’t. I think all belief in science requires an act of faith, e.g., the universe obeys laws of physics. I just haven’t heard this argued before.)

If we are only made of the dust around us, then, like a computer, we don’t truly have any control. It’s all just an illusion.

That points to why belief in free will is an act of faith. It is, by definition, not possible to know (because you could always argue your conclusions were not made by your will). It also lies outside the usual ‘god of the gaps’ straw-man debate, because it is more like an endless chasm. :)

Got it. I appreciate the explanation.

> but what I dislike about my atheism is that I get lumped in with people who'll tell theists that "they're wrong"

But every Christian that doesn’t reject the first Commandment implicitly believes the same thing. Some of them picket and scream terrible things at their outgroupers. Most are reasonably neutral and nice.

Giving too much oxygen or mind share to the few vocal outliers only lowers your quality of life. Also, there are enough atheists/agnostics/nones that it’s basically useless to talk about them as a monolithic group.

I am far more concerned about the asymmetry of media/discussion about the obnoxious few with bad ideas over the quiet plurality of pleasant people who don’t force their toxic ideas on others.