Thank you Ali your a kinder person then I Am
Crocoduck, no worries. 
A LOT of us are still "in recovery", and we remember all too well all the stuff that got drilled into our heads as kids/teens/young adults. Been there, done that!
I like that "in recovery" cause I have some issues!
I do, too. That's one of the reasons I joined HAF. For the community and fun and like-minded folks, but also to find a place that would give me a much-needed sense of balance and perspective. There's still a lot I'm thinking about. For instance, I call myself an agnostic, but not an atheist -- so I wanted to read up on why some people choose one term over the other, and in the end whether or not the distinction really matters much. And I've been a non-theist for a good while now, so I suspect this learning curve you, I and others here are on takes a good while. I'm not surprised though. After all, it's not like you can completely erase 20+ years of religion/belief and the influence it's had on your life, your perceptions, your family/social group etc.
It took me several years to embrace the term atheist. To be completely honest, I felt like that was a bridge that I couldn't uncross, and once I called myself an atheist, the god that I pretty much didn't believe in would send me to hell forever. Of course, I remember very clearly being told as a child that if you ever doubt Jesus, even for one single second, you would spend eternity in hell, so you can imagine the forces I was up against.
In the end, I don't really think it matters what people call themselves, except for their own sakes. I was scared to call myself an atheist - that's not healthy. But if you truly are agnostic, then embrace it. There is not a thing wrong with saying, simply, "I don't know."
Thanks, Ali. Yeah, I'm definitely agnostic. I don't know, I can't pretend I know, I'd like to keep my mind open in general but for all intents and purposes, how I live my life would certainly fall onto the secular side of things, in that I don't pray, don't worship, do embrace critical thought as well as science, etc. It's just that although it's great that others can feel sure enough to say "there's no God", I doubt I'll ever be that certain. I wouldn't be horribly surprised if some sort of deistic creator existed, but I reject religion as it currently exists in the world. If I went to a church at all for the community, it would be a unitarian universalist church. *shrug* As it is, the internet exists, as do message boards like this one, so I don't feel the need to. 
I don't think atheism is always equivalent to saying "There is no God", but I know what you mean. It took me awhile to get to saying I was an atheist rather than an agnostic, mostly because it sounded so harsh and definitive. I fully recognize that there
might be a deity, but because there's no evidence in favour of this, I see no reason to believe it. For me, it's on the same level of the Loch Ness Monster. Loch Ness has been studied, throroughly explored with sonar, and there is no sign of a giant eel-creature. All tangible evidence has been shown to be false or mistakenly attributed. But . . . that bugger still might be hiding somewhere. It eventually it becomes a 'maybe' so one-sided in my mind, that I can no longer say just "I don't know" and speak truthfully. At most, I'll say "Sure, there
might be. But I reeeeeally don't think so."
I hear you on still being "in recovery". Most people don't realize that losing faith also means dismantling a lifetime of opinions and prejudices that were taught to you as truth, having the insight to recognize what needs to be reworked, doing your own research to come to a better, well-informed opinion, and then overcoming the instilled fear that maybe, just maybe, your opinion is dooming you. Sucks, doesn't it? In some ways, it felt a lot better to be a theist, to feel secure in knowing all the answers, security in knowing all the moral dilemmas were solved in literal black and white, security in never having to think about life ending. It's hard to let all that go, especially for someone with a strong moral compass and a tendency to evangelize 'just a little'. Yeah, I was an annoying little tosser when I was a Christian (trying not to be now, sometimes failing).
