Indifferent

dc wager

Whether or not you believe in God, you should live your life with love, kindness, compassion, mercy and tolerance while trying to make the world a better place. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will have made a positive impact on those around you. If there is a benevolent God reviewing your life, you will be judged on your actions and not just on your ability to blindly believe in creeds- when there is a significant lack of evidence on how to define God or if he/she even exists.

by Infidel on 25th Jan 2010 | View all blogs by Infidel

Because of the type of person I am, labels are important to me. I think they help society and individuals define them selves and therefore serve a purpose. Now, obviously labels can't be comprehensive and are often misusued.

But I still think they serve a purpose. To that end, since my deconversion, I've been trying to find a "label" for myself. I tried deist, but that didn't fit. I tried athiest, but I wasn't ready for that. This left me with agnostic. This was technically correct, but in our society today, it is understood to mean someone who doesn't want to bother with the whole "god thing". So I didn't like the implication.

So these changes have occurred in the last few months, but this past weekend I had an epiphany! It was one of those crystal clear moments. I am...indifferent.

I don't really care if there is a god or not. If there is, he hasn't tried to talk to me, so why should I concern myself with him? If there isn't a god, then I'm worrying about nothing.

You have no idea how freeing that moment was!

Dictionary.com offers these two (among other) definintions of Indifferent:

1.	without interest or concern; not caring; apathetic: his indifferent attitude toward the suffering of others.

2.	having no bias, prejudice, or preference; impartial; disinterested.

Right now, that sums up my attitude about god pretty well.

I'm so happy that I now have a label!

Comments

6 Comments

by Ubi Dubium 1 month ago

Ah - there's a wonderful word that describes just what you are talking about:

Apatheist!
by Infidel 1 month ago

I had never heard of that word, but I love it! I might change my moniker!
by Snuggly Buffalo 1 month ago

I'm not a huge fan of "atheist" even though I do use it pretty frequently to describe myself. Thing is, atheist describes what I don't believe, and is ultimately not very informative. When I seriously consider labels for myself, I generally settle on freethinker and skeptic.

As far as the existence of god goes, I'm fairly apathetic myself anymore. What really concerns me is the behavior of all the people who still believe.
by atimetorend 1 month ago

I feel the same way about atheist. I may be a functional atheist but I do not want to own that label. I use different labels depending upon the listener. "Ex-Evangelical" is one I like because I am confident in it and it is entirely vague as to what I really do believe outside of that particular sect. I like apatheist too!

Right after reading here I came across this brief article on the topic, seems to be someone thinking along similar lines:
http://secweb.infidels.org/article808.html
by Infidel 1 month ago

Ex-Evangelical made me smile. My Christian friends cringe when I call myself an apostate!

Maybe I'm using the word wrong, but I think I meet the definition...at least as far as christianity goes.
by Infidel 1 month ago

I was looking for synonyms for Apatheist today and ran across this on wikipedia as one of the arguments for apatheism:

"Indifference - Also known as the 'I'll eat another cookie' philosophy, an indifferent apatheist would say, 'Since the existence of god can never be proven, nor can it be disproven, I won't waste my time asking questions to which there are no answers, and just eat another cookie.'"

I like peanut butter with chocolate chips!