My feelings on this are similar to Jonathon Miller's below. I was well into my 40s before I even had to use the word and that was in the USA where I had no idea a non-belief was so controversial. Back home nobody I knew was a 'believer' in the creationist sense, so the idea that my non-beliefs required a name never occurred.
It's only the fact that there are extreme believers that require us atheists to have a name they can use for us.
We are allowing ourselves to be named by those we disagree with.
Jonathan Miller: Let me say right at the outset that I've always been very reluctant to use the word "atheist," not because I'm embarrassed or ashamed of it but I think that this view scarcely deserves a title. No one has a special name for not believing in witches--I'm not an "a-hexist"--and I don't have a word for not believing in ghosts or anything of that sort. So the idea of there being a special name for what I've never had--which is a belief in God--seems to me to be odd, to say the least.
Still, my attitude toward the notion of a supernatural being is identical to that of those who do call themselves atheists, though I hold this view without any sort of vehemence or enthusiasm or evangelical drive. In that sense I'm rather unlike Richard Dawkins, for example, who is a zealous proselytizer for atheism. And I think one of the reasons for the difference is autobiographical--that he is what I call a "born-again atheist:" he started his life as a Christian, was a Christian until he was about sixteen, then read Charles Darwin and, as a result, became an atheist. I come from a Jewish family but was never brought up with any sort of Jewish practices at all. And I don't even know what being a Jew is--I'm a Jew for anti-Semites and that's really all. So I'm what I would call a "cradle atheist," insofar as I am an atheist.
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