Neatly said, agnostic MikeofNorthumbria. (BTW is there a southumbria?)

But 'gagging' on the word 'atheist' seems to me to bea little strong a reaction. If you mean, "You're SURE? Gee, I just don't know." it shouldn't make it hard to keep your lunch down.

It's a given that it's damn near impossible to prove a negative, but why is it required to prove anything to be an atheist more than it is of a believer to prove the existence of whichever god he worships. In fact, to benefit under existing US laws, atheism is a religion maybe not an oxymoron, but certainly an irony.

I take it that in curerent usage, atheism means rejection of the god or gods generally credited as being all-knowing, all-powerful, all-anything. There is no denial of the existence of spritual values such as embodied in Ethical Humanism.

Maybe it's just chemistry -- or whatever. We can appreciate it and celebrate it but we don't have to worship it. "To the DNA the glory!" I think not.