Agnostic with benefits.

I was born in a Roman Catholic extended family, but my parents never practiced it outside of holidays and ceremonies. As children, we were given full autonomy over our spiritual path, and so at the age of reason, religion fell away just as Santa Claus had before it.

I align myself with atheists politically and intellectually, but I do permit myself the glories of imagination. When I do contemplate a hereafter, it is nothing like a heaven – it is more like the next life in a series of lives, an assembly line on which life on Earth tightens its assigned screw.

None of this rises to the level of "belief." I am more comfortable thinking of afterlife as some permanent dream state your dying brain falls into. There are no religions that stake their claim on that.

I feel more traces of worship for space. Once I learned that our sun is just a star in a sea of trillions, that flipped a lot of pre-programmed switches into the off position.

I do use the words God, Heaven, and other such borrowings, but only metaphorically. These are the words I grew up with, and poetic license begs the strength of these words when used well.

To summarize, I am my own kind of agnostic with benefits.