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By Aaron Leonard

Updated: Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I can’t tell you how tickled I was when President Barack Obama acknowledged me in his inaugural speech. He said, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers.”

This most definitely is a new era. No longer are atheists relegated to the pariah status of the Bush years. We are now ensconced in the holy embrace of a status of our own: We are nonbelievers. I feel special.

I haven’t always been a nonbeliever. I used to believe big-time, but then one night I had a few beers (I was of age) and blurted out what I had been cogitating on for a very long time.

“I don’t think there really is a God,” I told my friend as we stood by the fire we had built in the woods.

Well, in the back of my mind I thought, “Oh boy, now here comes the smiting!” but there was no smiting, only the muffled snores of slumbering chipmunks. Of course that doesn’t amount to so much empirical evidence, but it was a start.

It’s true, I had always had doubts. I had trouble with the notion of a six-day creation, the Great Flood, the resurrection (think “Dawn of the Dead” without the cannibalism). They were right up there with Big Foot and Elvis sightings. Maybe, I thought, I’m too demanding? Perhaps this evidence thing ought only to apply in criminal cases? Why tie it to more mundane matters like the meaning of life?

I have gone on from that precious moment. I actually discovered that when science gets in a fist-to-cuffs with God, God loses pretty much every time. Science knocked Earth out of the center of our solar system; it knocked our solar system out of the center of the Milky Way galaxy; it showed natural selection really is how things evolve. It’s not always right, but as Theodoric of York (Steve Martin), medieval barber, said in the old “Saturday Night Live” sketch, “You know, medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time. Why, just 50 years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter’s was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach.” We are making progress.

Recently I told this kid in one of my classes I was an atheist, and he got very concerned. “So, like, you think if you’re facing death, you aren’t going to cry out to God?” he asked me. He was very worried about my soul, which I appreciated, but there is really nothing to worry about. We just did eight years of the Bush administration and all that scary stuff. Beyond that, we have had two World Wars that have taken the concept of slaughter to advanced levels. We are in the age of genocide, from Armenia to Auschwitz to Rwanda, with potential for more. I’m pretty confident there is no power hanging back taking all this in waiting for the right moment to intervene. We’re on our own.

I don’t think I’m better than anyone who believes in God. I have believed things in my day that seem outrageous in hindsight (and I’m certain there were atheists who believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and religious people who didn’t). We’re all down here trying to figure this stuff out. But believing and knowing are not the same thing. It’s the people who claim to know it all (religious and non) that make me nervous.

I’m so glad there is this new category of nonbeliever I can hitch my wagon to. I think we’re going to need all the skepticism we can muster to get through what is coming.

Aaron Leonard is a contributing columnist. E-mail him at opinion@nyunews.com.