Everyone knows that i don’t hold particularly high regards for the poster boy atheists. I’ve written about it, and been destroyed for my opinion in a few places (some worse than others) and everyone thought I was some anti-atheist without even taking into consideration the positive posts I had written before. After the whole “why atheists annoy me” thing I sort of shied away from writing about atheism all that often. I’ve long argued that to make yourself feel included and comfortable within a movement you need to find someone who you can relate to. Someone that makes you think “Yeah! That is so right on!” someone who you wouldn’t mind speaking for you anywhere at anytime.

Nica Lalli is a mother of two (two who sound intelligent, and adorable), a PTA mom, painter, has a master of fine arts and married to a man she met when she was 21. ( I love love.) She is also the author of Nothing:Something to Believe In, and an atheist. Most importantly (at least for the matters of this post) she is the first atheist who has come to speak at CFI that I’ve ever been able to relate to. Ever.

Although our back-stories are extremely different (she was raised secular by non-religious parents and has never been religious …I was raised Christian by Christian parents and a minister), what she has to say now resonates with me deeply. I knew as soon as she said “I didn’t want to be the voice, I just wanted to be one of many” that I was going to like her much more than the other “voice” I’ve heard. (that makes me sound crazy…) But what we both are, is “interested in why religion is interesting” to us.

At first I thought she was going to be a cope out because she was calling herself “nothing” instead of slapping the word atheist on her forehead. But once she described that she wanted something “outside the debate” it made a lot more sense. All the other words, atheist, agnostic, freethinker, bright [thats the worst], humanist, rationalist – all have a stigmata (heh) behind them from being inside the religious debates.

Her book doesn’t fit in, where her book is about living life as an atheist – raising kids, dealing with in laws and just being her the other books about atheism and religion. About why atheism is the be all end all marvelous anti-faith that is going to save us all from our narrowminded and blinded views. Dawkins et al don’t show their weaknesses or talk about their lives rather they’re more interested in telling everyone else how stupid they are. Where Dawkins and his posse make it very hard to like atheists, Nica makes it very easy to fall totally in love with her. The poster boy atheists are making it very hard to say “I’m an atheist” without getting a million nasty glares and grilled with a lot of questions based on the assumption that you think just like them. Nica tries to describe and help us learn how to live in this world, where we’re not quite liked yet. Unfortunately the poster boys are very good at describing what it is that makes us angry, so they go off and get angry. Everywhere. All the time. And look silly. But Nica is right in saying that it is good that we have someone expressing those views – I just wish it wasn’t the only “mainstream” (so to speak) view out there.

Near the end of her talk, she did it. She did what no other atheist speaker I have ever seen has done before. It was like she was sent from God to help me understand my non-belief. She described what she believes in. She describes it with a story where she is in New York, surrounded by people while she’s in her car. At that moment, she was thinking, that all those people are thinking something. Thinking, remembering, wishing, dreaming, hoping…and being an individual. That was so overwhelming to her, and it is to me too. Although I take this a bit further, and include the sheer overwhelming feeling that the universe in general gives me. The beauty and power of discovery, the inconceivable size of the galaxy and yes, like Nica, the amazing thought that everyone is here, thinking, being and living.

Nica wrote her book to show how normal she is. So believers and non-believers could read it and relate to what she had to say. And then, perhaps, turn to the person beside them, no matter what denomination, and share a story with them. Stop the bickering and build a stronger relationship with those around you. A relationship that goes beyond lables and the armor so that we can just be, and understand one another on a new appreciative level. It’s pretty pathetic when you can’t have a discussion because religion overkills. Nica, like me, is unwilling to say that all belief is bad. It is absolutely tragic that there is an automatic assumption that they hate us, and we hate them. Then the world just seems so much more fragmented.

It’s too bad that she isn’t tough enough for Americans. She isn’t spitting in people’s faces and tearing down the religious fundamentalists that threaten our lives, rights and countries. Instead she is too normal, so people pay far to little attention to her. She is not an arrogant scientist. She’s not stuck up. She doesn’t act like she has the answers. She isn’t untouchable. She is approachable. She is intelligent and well spoken. She is a good writer. And she says what is in my head. She is someone I can relate to, which makes it a lot easier for me to call myself an atheist, or rather…nothing.