Discussions with agnostics remind me of my own early forays into the atheist world. While I knew down deep the religion I had inherited from my elders was more holey than holy, my thoughts were founded in the false outlook caused by misinformation they had planted, truths buried under lies. "Atheism is an evil religion with no God." "Atheists all believe in something, even if it's money." "Atheists are evil people, who've chosen to disbelieve (the most common and deranged lie of all)."

Those words, and all that they portray, are what influenced me. Add to that my ultra-conservative republican upbringing, steeped in the fundamentals of revivalism and adventism nowadays called 'evangelical', alter-kneeled to the point of forgiveness, and sprinkled, dipped and sprayed in every possible form of baptism, and I should have been set for the most godly kind of life.

A problem made itself apparent, however: I saw the light, alright, but I also saw behind it the way most transforming agnostics must have also done. I saw the light hid a scary kind of darkness where demons and intimidating, leering characters of all kinds glowed back at me. I saw the people holding the light as they thought best, and behind them different sets of evil beings lurked.

Behind my own mother and father were two sets of different lurkers. I wanted to know why, and what they were.

One day I dared to move past the lights with which they all worked so hard to blind me to the true nature of their religions, because I wanted to see for myself. I held up my hands to shade my eyes, and squinted into the darkness while I made my way toward it. The demons, ghouls, ghosts and goblins, all of them were formed of painted mists and paper that crumbled to dust when I touched them. I found nothing real there at all, and nothing scary remained within the darkness.

What I didn't realize yet was that all that remained was atheism. The darkness grew huge while I made my forays into it from behind all the variations of lights that had beckoned me and claimed to offer guidance; it expanded even as I learned about what I could find in its apparent emptiness; it went beyond where all the lights were shined by those who still searched for me in hopes that they could retrieve me. The narrow focus of all those lights shining at me had more than blinded me against the darkness, they had desensitized me to all the other ways of knowing things —the ways of science— and they had made spots appear in my retinas that glowed even in the darkness, that made me feel convinced that something else was there, a supernatural form of some kind that must be God or an angel.

The eyes take a long time to heal when the light has shone so brightly in them for the first few decades of a lifetime, but the glowing spots eventually faded until I realized they were manifested in my own mind, and came from nowhere real beyond me.

I learned, meanwhile, to test the darkness with the other senses I had access to, and to listen, taste, smell and feel my way around. Our sixth sense, the one we deny to exist, or the one that most people attribute to some emanations of their gods, is our sense of memories and thoughts we call our 'minds' and emanates as our sense of 'self'. It is that sense that makes sense of the darkness as being just what it is, a harmless empty place that occupies most of the universe— or puts gods and demons there that have been created by the light that burns our eyes and blinds us to the things our abandoned senses of self tells us are true in spite of what our eyes have seen. If blinding people to the true facts of nature and thereby placing their lives in danger is not immoral, then what is?

You are still looking at the spots dancing before your eyes if you still sense the presence of possible invisible characters, and they will not go away until the cause of them has healed. That will not happen overnight. You must, meanwhile, feel around in the darkness on your own. You will do that only because you are driven to by your own urges, and not by anything anyone else tells you is true, only to prove them "wrong" if for no other reason. You will find your own "Eureka!" moments, your own realizations and insights into what we struggled so hard to tell you and you struggled so hard to resist.

Your other senses will, with the passage of time, form within your mind a kind of light of dawning understanding. When that occurs, you will only then realize why we find it so hard to explain our secular views to you, and also more forcefully than now, exactly why you can't perceive them. Then, only then, and not until then, will you understand what it means to certify yourself as an atheist.

As for the rest of us, we must accept our role is to understand that anyone who calls him or herself an 'agnostic' is at the beginning of that foray into the darkness. They have dared to surpass the blinding lights, spurred on by nothing more than the impetus inspired by their own curiosity, and we need to develop a better way than what we now have to give them a helping hand instead of our condemnation. They do not deserve reprisal, we tend to forget (yes, me, too), and we do not have a right to knock them down. They are special people, brave and stalwart, searching for the truth and we must help them find it.

So, yes, there may be emanations of Xianity or Islam or Judaism coming from any one of them. Tough love may help more of them to discover the true nature of that —the 'spots' we all see when we go from bright light into a dark place— and to see that the way the bright light has blinded them makes it even more necessary to learn to test with the remaining facilities at their disposal. The spots that influence their view of the darkness still frighten them.

We must remember that, and not make them all the more afraid just because they haven't yet arrived at the point of self-certification. While it is not an intentional result of our jesting, we ought to learn how to avoid adding to the angst and fright they may not yet have recognized as such.

While I feel like half of my life was wasted on theism, I can see there are advantages to that over someone who was raised to be an atheist, at least in the present state of human existence. I know exactly why I hold no god beliefs and can state it without having to stop and ponder. I have seen both sides of the story, and can fully appreciate the importance of telling our side of it to the world, and of studying hard to find the best way to do that. Too many people raised as atheists or agnostics do not feel the pressure of the sickness that surrounds us, and feel uninterested and apathetic about the nature of it, and think themselves healthy and whole even though they thoughtlessly practice the lifestyles and uphold the protocols inherent to Arabic religious dogma. In secular America, oblivion rules!

People who feel driven to tell us why we're wrong will irk the hell out of us. I have decided maybe that's a good thing. We need someone willing to let us practice telling it the way it is, and anyone who has the gumption, drive and perspicacity to hang in there while we struggle to keep from laughing at him or her is exactly the right kind of medicine to drive us into increasing our own understanding.

So, agnostics, you are pills to keep us healthy. We have no fear of your message, and need not act like we do. Do your stuff! You can be sure that we'll be here to egg you on. We'll all be ignorant asses (as some religionists refer to us) the best way we can because, for now, we know that if you have what it takes, you will someday be one of us. Facts are facts, and facts are on our side; and testable factuality is why religious leaders do not want you learning too much about our view of reality.

They are afraid you'll look beyond the light and, armed with factual information, realize that their lights are keeping you from discovering your own. They blind you with them, rather than shine your way toward reality. For now, let us bray. Amen.