He wouldn’t have called himself an atheist; being an atheist required more belief than he had, a kind of determined certainty about mystery that he didn’t think was feasible or possible, admirable or even desirable. Who could deny a guiding hand of some kind, a design to the world? Calling it science didn’t explain it all to him either. He wasn’t a believer and he wasn’t a nonbeliever. He wasn’t something and he wasn’t nothing. He was a survivor.
