Label are a great, "short hand" to help convey a quick identity or position. The problem I have is that a label is a start of discussion not a permanent tag we place on people

labels can be handy. one doesn't have to behave a certain way because of them. as for acceptance, that is of no concern to me at all. if i express who i am accurately, be it through a label, a long explanation or my behavior at any given moment, then the people who accept me are likely to be people i WANT to accept me. i don't say who i am in a way calculated to promote acceptance. being oneself is hard enough without adding to it an attempt to be who someone else might like one to be!

g

I am an agnostic atheist as a side effect of valuing critical thinking and systematically applying it to my experienced life. Like everyone else, I'm a lot of other things too -- husband, father, stepfather, grandfather, contractor, consultant, software architect / developer, system admin when I have to be, and much more. I don't accept labels because of how they make me feel, but because of how they reflect reality. If I don't like how a reflection of reality makes me feel, then I change the reality behind the label. For example if someone calls me "asshole", and I can conclude that's legitimate, then I stop being one.

I don’t use terms like theist, agnostic, or atheist to describe myself, because they are all on the literalist spectrum, and I’m not a literalist. I don’t know if there is a well established word for the opposite of literalist - maybe metaphoricalist, or allegoricalist? Mythologist?

I believe that the early religious writings that gave rise to current world religions were the attempts of scientifically illiterate people to understand and manage the naturally troublesome psychology of large-brained hominids. The phenomena they were describing were real (feelings). The only language they had, at the time, to describe these phenomena was the language of metaphor.

A literal interpretation of these metaphorical descriptions of real psychological phenomena always was and still is an erroneous understanding of the literature. It really was embryonic science.

I’m good with being a Homo sapiens.