I'm not defending him or anything but some people don't like labels. Me for instance I don't like to be called by any denomination not even nondenomination as that itself is a denomination and I don't even like calling myself Christian I simply call myself a child of God.
I am a Christian but My identity is simply a child of God
Blain,
Let's move beyond your own dislike of denominations, and deal with the real issue I was originally dealing with above... the fact that an atheist wouldn't admit he was an atheist.
In our post postmodern relativistic culture...
many people try to avoid any kind of label just to avoid REALITY and all ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH THAT REALITY.
If you're a boy who wants to be a girl, you just say, "I am now a girl," and everyone is supposed to pretend you've magically turned into a girl. Just by changing your label from boy to girl, we're all supposed to believe you have somehow ACTUALLY CHANGED from a boy to a girl.
Chickenkiller, who by all definitions is an atheist, wants to say, "I'm not an atheist", as if those 4 words will magically transform him into something else. Well, they don't.
We have this mutual convention called language, that helps us to communicate.
We have words for things.
If the whole world looks at an oak tree and calls it a "tree", but YOU choose to call it a "donkey"... well... it's still a tree.