I am an atheist. I strive to be a good person.

When I was about eleven, a friend of mine tried to convert me to Christianity. I had never questioned the lack of religion in my life up until that point. The girl's parents were missionaries in Hawaii, and she felt it her duty to bring me to the faith the way that her parents brought others. I found myself feeling suddenly guilty for having no religion in my life.

Due to social pressure, I considered myself to be a Christian for about three days. Then it wore off, and I lapsed back into the carefree beliefs I had been raised with, which were no beliefs at all.

As for religion, any religion, on the occasions when any of them were brought to my attention as I further grew up, I generally just scratched my head and wondered how anyone could be so convinced that their improvable views were so right. For some years I resented that I had been made to feel so uncomfortable about my religionlessness by someone whom I had considered to be a friend. I learned the word 'atheist', and even though it had negative connotations, the word fit.

I am twenty-four now. I see no point in addressing whether or not there is anything after death until I am dead and I can see for myself. I prefer to run on the assumption that nothing happens after death but a bit of decomposition. Life is too short to spend pondering what comes after. I have much to accomplish before I die.

I am probably a bit odd for someone who proudly bears the title "atheist", in that I will admit that my atheism is based not on scientific signposts that point to a lack of proof of any gods, but in faith that there are no omnipotent beings and no afterlife.

I am learning to accept that the people around me believe in gods and ghosts. But probably the thing that I have the most trouble with is the general belief among the religious that a godless person is without morals, is not capable of being a good person. How can I make them understand that compassion for others drives me to constantly re-evaluate the way I live my life?

Two events occurred in the past half-year. One was that I visited India. I saw, among many things, a man in a loincloth walking on his hands because one of his legs was withered to a vestigial, flopping bone-and-skin appendage. I weep for this man, and for the endless others like him, and I will do what I can to make the world a better place for them.

And then, more recently, a friend whom I know only through the internet, depressed by adolescence and a miserable home-life, attempted to take his own life. He confided in me before he went to anyone in real-life. For a few days, I felt like I carried his life in my hands. I wrote to him every helping word I could think, and I feared with every word I wrote that one of them would be the one to send him back to that bathroom where the kitchen knife was waiting. I could see so much potential in this kid that it tore me up to imagine a world without him.

As I tried to help this person whom I'd never met, I kept thinking of his situation in this metaphor: that he was down in a deep, dark hole that he couldn't get out of. And all it would take was one last stumble for him to fall into irretrievable depths. And the more I tried to help him, the farther I climbed down into the hole myself. I was depressed and getting more so, and I had to turn to my family and friends to help me so that I could help this boy.

And to my amazement, the people whom I love reacted not with universal approval, but with suspicion and bitterness! Who was this faceless person whom I had never seen, but whom I allowed to pull me into emotional hell? Why should I help him? In what way could I benefit?

And my answer? I expected to get nothing in return. I simply expected myself to be a good person to someone in need.

I found the consolation that they could not give me in a book by the Dalai Lama, called "Ethics for the New Millennium." I needed someone to tell me that it is okay to act selflessly.

I seem to have something in common with the Dalai Lama: we both believe that morals should be relative. I have listened to Christians disdainfully sniff that an atheist can never be a good person because to an atheist, there is no set of rules set in stone about what is good behavior and what is bad. To which I can only think of a story that was told to me by a friend. There were three people who were friends, and two of them, Christians, were harassing the third for living with her fiance and having sex with him. But the two good Christians were well-known for having one-night stands. Though they never had intercourse, they did everything else in bed. By their strict rules of life, they had not transgressed morally. And yet they made life painful for a "friend" for her having had sex with the one person whom she loved and was going to spend the rest of her life with.

I want to do good in the world and I think that I can do far more without a binding set of commandments saying what is right and what is wrong.

The unexamined life is not worth living. I intend to make my life very worth living, indeed.

I have no religion, but I am a spiritual person. I believe that if a person is capable of doing a good thing in the world, then she has a responsibility to do so. No god tells me to do this, only my heart.

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