Am I an atheist?

It depends. I know for sure that I am not very comfortable being called an atheist.
a·the·ist Pronunciation Key - [ey-thee-ist]
–noun a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
You are an atheist if you believe that God does not exist. My stand is similar to Bill Maher's. I just don't know and it is impossible to know. I guess by definition that makes me an agnostic. Being atheist is being sure of God's non-existence and that is not being humble or in fact scientific in some sense. In science I don't think you throw anything away unless you prove it wrong. I cannot throw any idea away unless I know for sure that it is faulty. How can anyone be sure?

I am a believer. How can I be one when I am an agnostic? Because, I believe that God is not a separate entity but that he/she resides in each one of us. To respect each other and have compassion for one another is to respect God. I don't think I believe that there is this supreme being that created all of us and continues to do so. But I do believe that there is something. I am not sure what it is. But I believe there is a thread that connects all of us that can be tapped. A thread of energy? Maybe, I don't know. Like I said, I am not sure. But I certainly detest following any sacred book in the name of God or religion. I believe in using my brain. I cannot live by something I do not comprehend. None of these books ever have any convincing answers anyway. Take The Bhagavat Gita for example. No matter how many times I read it, I still cannot convince myself that Arjuna did the right thing by killing his relatives.

I am also a non-believer. When I see innocent people being killed everyday, I question the existence of an almighty. Why is there so much suffering if there is an omnipotent being? Please don't give me this crap about karma and previous birth. Isn't God supposed to forgive? Isn't he supposed to love everyone, the evil-doers and the good alike? Why create miscreants and then punish them? Catastrophes make me believe that everything happens at random, there is no order. There is no karma, there is no afterlife and there is no selection process (here, I am NOT referring to Darwin's theory, I am referring to selection based on karma) that determines who dies and who lives. And if you still believe in this supreme being, I must say that he is rather cruel.

There is a fundamental difference between the fundamentalists and non-believers. Fundamentalists think that we should not use our brain. Why? Because according to their logic, we are imperfect beings created by a perfect almighty. So our thought process is imperfect, which leads to imperfect reasoning. So we should blindly follow what He has prescribed. I must say, I NEVER would have come up with this reasoning if not for my friend who enlightened me on why religious conservatives do not use their brains. To me this convoluted logic is absolutely ridiculous. I am not willing to live a life worrying about afterlife. I let my brain and sometimes my heart decide what is right or wrong.

Am I an atheist? You tell me. The following quotes sum up my belief.

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God,
who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. - Gene Roddenberry

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. - Doug McLeod

It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. - Mark Twain

I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’. - Mike Fuhrman

If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth? - Ryan Hanson

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means. - Clarence Darrow

I have known many good people who did not believe in God. But I have never known a human being who was good who did not believe in people. [language slightly modified] -John Lovejoy Elliott