I Am Kyuuketsuki!

Who I Am & Why I Am What I Am!

My name is James but I go by the handle of Kyuuketsuki which is Japanese for “vampire” and [apparently] is pronounced koy-ooo-ket-soo-koy. I am British by birth proud of my heritage, much less so of my government’s policies & actions and politically consider myself to be a left-wing hawk i.e. I believe in the welfare state but unlike many left-wingers consider that peace & freedom can only survive if actively (and, if necessary, aggressively) defended so a strong military capability is essential. I don’t believe in the concept of automatic rights and feel that rights can only exist where someone is willing to guarantee them and that means either being willing and able to stand up for them yourself or being part of a group that will guarantee them for you (and to my mind that is an important part of what a government and military should do). I am 50 years old and a happily married father of 2 beautiful girls (must be their mother), an IT professional and computer phreak, a science graduate & enthusiast, a science fiction fan and a rational atheist.

That last is important … whilst atheism is merely a label and not a philosophy the forces that brought me to that pretty much define who and what I am and how I will react in most situations. I pride myself on my ability to reason, I reject any and all claims that cannot be supported by validatable evidence or at least have some degree of “fit” to the currently accepted explanations so far given (explanations such as the big bang, evolution, plate techtonics, quantum mechanics and so on) so much so that I am often claimed to be closed minded … I’m not but there are those who would like to believe I am. My general attitude in support of my stance is, give me a reasonable theory and a little validatable evidence to support it please. As I say I am a rational atheist, in other words I have arrived at my position of atheism by shedding all belief in the supernatural … that means that your god (and I genuinely don’t care which one it is) does not exist, not until you can prove it and I freely invite you to challenge me on that, to prove that I am wrong … I have seen a lot of arguments claiming to prove the existence of this god or that (or even just that there is some kind of deity) and all of them without exception have turned out to be based on appeals to authority, appeals to common sense, twisted distortions of the truth, out-context quotations, appeals to my lack of specific knowledge (or science’s), the citation of a lack of evidence to counter a given claim or plain lies.

So atheism pretty much defines who and what I am inasmuch as I am atheist because I use reason and logic to reject all current claims to deity and that all I require to acceptance of this god or that is validatable evidence and a reasonable interpretation of the same. For the very same reason I reject claims to ghosts, Atlanteans (and all other similar claims to ancient technological races), UFO’s, life on other planets (until it actually gets discovered), miracles and anything else supernatural. In essence I reject entirely the whole idea of supernature … as a science adherent I assume that the universe is inherently explainable, reasonable & logical and that whilst we may never fully grasp some things (such as the fundamental quantum nature of the atom) nothing is inherently beyond the reach of science and our explanation of the entire universe is limited by our ability to resolve (limited by our technological ability and the universe itself) and our ability to mount a sufficiently capable campaign of investigation (time and resources). In other words there is no place in a rational universe for anything except the natural.

I will go into the specific reasons I am an atheist elsewhere, perhaps in a later post but for now that’s it and I welcome you and your comments to my blog.

I would especially like to extend an invitation to UK based atheists everywhere … contact me and tell me something about yourself and maybe you can post blogs on this front page.

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)