As an atheist, I am often met with disapproval, fear, and harsh judgment. This is crazy to me, because I am pretty morally sound (if I do say so myself), I am kind, and try my hardest to treat others as I would like to be treated. Most of these reactions are caused by ignorance and misconceptions about what being an atheist means and how I have come to this decision.

Here are five reasons why I call myself an atheist:

1. I am young.

First and foremost, I just turned 17 a few days ago. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told, “you will change your mind when you are older.” I agree I am naïve. I agree that I have so much left to learn and that I do not have much life experience. This is all the more reason for me to keep searching, however, not to just blindly accept. Maybe one day I will believe in God or Gods or heaven or angels or Allah or Zeus, but I have so much left to discover about the universe. It is not the fault of my rebellious teenage years or lack of morals; it is simply a result of not having enough evidence in my short lifetime to come to a conclusion.

2. I don’t know.

Being an atheist is not about saying, “there is no God.” I am an atheist because I do not believe in one. The burden of proof lies to prove something is true, rather than to disprove it, as he cannot disprove a negative, such as “there are not ghosts.” I am in the default state. I know, that for many people faith and God are not logical beliefs, and if that works for you, great. But, for me, I refuse to just accept. I want to know. I want evidence. I want concrete facts. I need proof, and not anecdotal testimony or “feelings” or God gaps; I want answers.

3. I don’t find comfort in God.

I am not scared by mystery. The fact that I do not know how the world started or how it will end or what happens after death or where we come from or what life even is, humbles me and excites me. The universe is full of wonder and events we cannot explain, and this makes life interesting. The not knowing makes life so magnificent. I do not take comfort in the God gap, essentially where God is used to answer phenomenon we don’t understand. They used to believe that it was Zeus causing lighting, because they had no idea about how electricity worked. I want to find the real answer, not just comfort myself with “it’s God.”

4. I am not an agnostic.

When I tell people I am atheist only because I do not have evidence to support the existence of God, they usually say, “Oh, so you’re an agnostic.” No, I am not. I was an agnostic when I thought that there were two options: God or nothing. I am an atheist because now I understand that maybe there is a God, or maybe there are Gods, or a force, or maybe everything is an illusion, or maybe a multiverse, or maybe quantum mechanics and string theory can explain it, or maybe I am God, or maybe I am the only real person, or maybe if we travel at the speed of light we will understand more, and on and on. I am not torn between two options; I am torn between infinite possibilities that exhilarate me.

5. I am an independent thinker.

This is not a knock at believers, because many of them have thought long and hard about their faith and I completely respect their beliefs. The point here is that I do not blindly accept what people believe around me. Just because I was brought up one way, or live in a certain culture, or are surrounded by certain opinions, I will form my own beliefs off of what I see to be true and what makes sense to me.