I must confess and come out of the closet. I’m an atheist. I lack a belief in God. But please don’t think I’m a bad person absent of morals because I don’t have a Holy Book or deity to get my values from.

Atheists just get their morals through science, reason and philosophy rather than through faith in a God. Just as the Christian rejects parts of the Bible that say you should kill your kids if they talk back (Mark 7: 9-13, Matthew 15: 4-7) and stone to death heretics (Deuteronomy 13: 6-10), atheists look outside the word of God to find their values, and they find good values. In this way, one can be moral and be an atheist.

And to get definitions clear, an “agnostic” — one who believes that God is unknown or unknowable — is really an atheist, because he lacks a belief in God. It doesn’t matter why. Agnosticism, in this way, collapses into atheism.

And atheism, to define it positively, can be called “scientific humanism.” As a so-called “atheist,” it’s weird to be defined by what I don’t believe in. I’m also an a-astrologist, a-alchemist, a-bigfootist and a-tea leafist because I don’t believe in those either. But they don’t define my identity.

And one can believe in natural, individual and constitutional rights without believing in a creator or God. One can be conservative politically and morally, and a patriotic American, and still be an atheist.

In fact, many of our nation’s Founding Fathers weren’t Christians. They were either Deists (believing in a creator, but one with no more powers after that) or outright atheists. The word God was explicitly left out of the US Constitution.

Sixteen percent of Americans aren’t religious, according to a recent poll. So please don’t be bigoted against atheists. After all, you’re probably atheist as to Zeus and Poseidon (the ancient Greek Gods), the Sun God, and Krishna (unless you’re Hindu). And you’re certainly atheist as to the countless other Gods that have come and gone over the course of human history. As a modern-day atheist, I just go one more God over. As Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) said, “the religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”

I encourage you to read any of the recent atheist bestsellers by Sam Harris (“The End of Faith,” “Letter to a Christian Nation”), Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”), Christopher Hitchens (“God is Not Great”), or Daniel Dennett (“Breaking the Spell.”)

As atheists, we’ve read many of your books, we only ask that you do us the courtesy of reading one of ours.

Jeff E. Jared is a Kirkland resident and attorney.