If you could only take 10 words to a desert island to talk about religon….

…which ones would you pick?

This is not a hypothetical question.  I got into a conversation with religion with my ASL tutor (she’s running a Christian ministry for the Deaf in DC) and I had to do a lot of fingerspelling to explain why I don’t believe in any gods.  My teacher suggested that I make a list of words I really need, and she’ll teach them to me next week and we’ll continue the conversation.

What words/concepts would you suggest I put on the list?  Some of the ones I picked up this week: evidence, hypothesis, believe, god, faith, explain, tweak.  Still looking for ‘contingent,’ ‘morality,’ and some others that my teacher is already planning to track down.

Having to work within my limited ASL vocabulary was a pretty good exercise in trying to explain my atheism simply and briefly.  Here’s the best distillation I managed to sign:

A hypothesis can’t just name the thing I don’t understand.  It has to teach me something new and true.  So when I don’t know something, I just say I don’t know.

I also managed to sign “Beliefs need to pay rent” but that came at the end of summarizing that Yudkowsky essay, which was hard.  What words do I need to put on my religious argument cheat guide?

P.S. In case anyone is interested, the ASL word for ‘Christian’ is a compound of the sign for ‘Jesus‘ followed by the ‘agent affix.’  She doesn’t know a sign for ‘atheist’ and I didn’t find one in ASLpro’s religious dictionary, either.