Leonidas and religion (Pt. II)

Atheist is a pleasant word to me. When I first read it, I assumed it was pronounced ah-fee-ihst until I started to get into the realms of religion and philosophy and heard the "ay" sound there. Most likely I wouldn't like the word if I wasn't an atheist. The above was all superfluous, I just felt like opening my second post on religion with a little reflection on pronunciation :).

But contrary to popular belief (in certain parts of the USA anyway, I'm told,) I'm not an atheist because I don't want to submit to authority or because I refuse to accept God or anything like that. This post sets out to outline just some of the reasons why I don't believe.

Stigma

You know, I'm a big fan of apples. I'm not satisfied if there's a day where I haven't eaten one apple - but mainly because that's part of the autistic routine I don't like to deviate from. Also because they taste amazing. Now, when I eat apples, I'm not wasteful, I eat all of it, core included, and yes, some of the god-feared seeds. What's bizarre is that this simple act of eating an edible core causes me all kinds of grief. I've been called "One of those weird people who eats apple cores" at least twice.

All of this insanity makes me wonder at the power of stigma.