"I write like a bum who is chewing the fat with friends, a beer in hand."

Well, if that's so, it's a bum whose brain works properly.

I can get a bit jargon heavy when the matter turns to philosophy and/or logic; those are at the core of my academic career and (kinda-sorta) what I do. I try not to load up my responses with the jargon of those fields, but that desire often wars with trying to be as accurate as possible...and it's a war I'm not always any good at fighting.

I'm an atheist, as well...although I'd probably call myself a "functioning atheist." That is to say, in the strictest sense, we're all agnostic: we don't know whether gods exist. We can't fulfil knowledge conditions on that point (and probably never will). But if in all matters upon which the question of whether or not there is at least one god impinges, if I proceed as if the answer is "no," then for all practical purposes, my agnosticism is "overwritten" by atheism.