Atheists need a better name

Atheism is defined as not believing in God, but I think if you talked with most atheists you would find that they don't believe in other supernatural things. Most doubt anything that sounds like an unlikely and unsupported assertion. Virtually all will not believe in spirits, chiropracters, UFO abductions, or faeries. In general, we don't believe something unless we think there is some evidence or unbiased arguments for it.

I think the core belief for most atheists is not so much a lack of belief in God as belief in critical thinking. Reason and evidence trump everything when deciding what is true. There is more than one path that lead to atheism, but for most it is a result of putting a high value on critical thinking often accompanied by a distaste for unsupported assertions (aka pulling stuff out your ass). There may have been experiences that motivated us in this direction, but most of us ultimately arrived here by thinking about and analyzing the evidence. There may be other kinds of atheists out there who don't believe in God, but believe in other magic, but I doubt there are really all that many compared to the crowd that worships critical thinking and reason.

I would prefer a term that is more about what I am than what I am not. Atheist really doesn't say alot about you, it just says what you are not. Also, atheist is a term that was created by God believers. I'd rather get named by someone who actually understands my point of view.

Using the term Atheism seems to frame the question as belief in God vs. not believing in God. I prefer to frame it as trusting critical thinking first vs. putting other methods first or on equal footing with critical thinking. There are people who for the most part think critically and act reasonably and rationally, but still believe in God. Personally, I don't know how they pull it off, but I have met them and they do in fact exist. I think I have much more in common with a sensible God believer than someone who doesn't believe in God, but does believe in the healing power of crystals and/or UFO abductions.

Skeptic works better as a term, but even it isn't quite the right fit for me. I'm not skeptical of everything. In fact, I personally think that if something is highly likely to be true or even just probably true then there is nothing wrong with just going for it. It's fairly rare that something be proved beyond a doubt. I say as long as you have good reasons, there's no need to dither just because you can't prove something 100%. My problem is just with people believing the stuff that pretty much has no chance of being true.

I was toying with inventing a new term for my beliefs. I was thinking maybe "Nexism". A belief that there are natural explanations for everything. There's really no reason to resort to magic explanations when you can't explain something. Technically, there is a philosophy term that already exists for this, "Naturalism". Unfortunately, the term "naturalist" is already taken. If I went around calling myself a naturalist, most people would think I meant something else by it.

In any case, I'm not sure Nexist has the right ring to it. I want a name that is catchy, simple and feels right. I don't like the term "bright" either. It doesn't have a good ring. Sounds a little cheesy to me.