Freethinker, Secularist, Nontheist, Humanist.......

In the January/February 2008 issue of The Humanist magazine (pg 17) I read a short article titled The Post-Theological Umbrella by David Niose. It talks about humans in the "pre-theological" stage moving to the theological stage as a "natural development of extremely advanced animals."

The article explains that we came to a point in our development when we were smart enough to ask deep questions, but not smart enough to answer them. The proof that it is normal for any advanced animal comes from the Neanderthals, who "buried their dead and had religious relics that suggest that they also asked deep questions that required theological answers."

This all makes sense to me until I'm asked to describe myself as "post-theological" instead of atheist. I'm seeing articles in magazines and blog entries all over the place telling me to call myself something different in order to avoid the icky feelings theists get when they hear "atheist". This article, like the others I've read, mentions the 2001 ARIS survey. This study revealed 13% identified as non-religious, but only 1% call themselves atheist. Post-theological doesn't sound bad to me, and that's where I get confused. I've been extremely happy with being just an atheist all this time.

The point of this article is for all of us to come together and pick one name to fight under, other than atheist, or changes in culture regarding theism vs. atheism will take much longer. I'm having a hard time thinking this through, because I've only been an atheist for three years. I'm still super pissed about being brainwashed as a child. I can't tell if it's anger or reason that tells me I should just stick with atheist and fight the fight. I don't want it to take longer than it needs to and theists are having huge success with renaming creationism. Should we do what they are doing and rename in order to try to gain a warm-fuzzies face?